


How Fate Intended

by hoboheartache



Series: How Fate Intended [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (not for a while they're babies), Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Bottom Draco Malfoy, Cannibalism, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Creature Draco Malfoy, Creature Fic, Creature Harry Potter, Creature Inheritance, F/F, F/M, Ginny Weasley Bashing, Good Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Grey Harry, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry is a Little Shit, Hermione Granger Bashing, Horror, I will yeet you into the sun, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Master of Death Harry Potter, Mentor Voldemort (Harry Potter), Molly Weasley Bashing, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Necromancer Harry Potter, Necromancy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Powerful Harry Potter, Ron Weasley Bashing, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Seer Luna Lovegood, Slytherin Harry Potter, Somewhat Good Voldemort (Harry Potter), Soul Bond, Soulmates, Time Travel Fix-It, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning, Top Harry, if you even hint at wanting mpreg, in this house we are aggressively anti-mpreg, need to rewrite the earlier chapters to fit in with the rest of the fic, seems like crack for a while before getting better (I promise)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 70
Words: 238,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoboheartache/pseuds/hoboheartache
Summary: The tattered memory of Tom Riddle sat on the porch of number 4 Privet Drive, pressing desperately into the horcrux housed in Harry Potter’s forehead.orIn which Harry Potter is unceremoniously thrust back in time and forced to deal with Voldemort whining inside his head, at least Death had the decency to apologize.
Relationships: Daphne Greengrass/Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Theodore Nott & Harry Potter & Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood & Theodore Nott, Luna Lovegood/Theodore Nott, Tracey Davis & Daphne Greengrass
Series: How Fate Intended [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2202813
Comments: 2495
Kudos: 2877
Collections: Harry Potter Fanfiction Favorites, He was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy, Legacy's Interest, The Good Kush, Time Travel fics for Sol to read on her Interdimensional Travels, did someone say time travel





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to do a fic like this for ages, because mixing bad cliches with witty characters and a fun plot has been on my bucket list.

A man sat in front of a small bundle on a doorstep.

Inside of the bundle was a boy, breathing softly as his tiny hands clutched the warm blanket he was swaddled in. The boy was just a little over a year old, and had a fresh wound of what appeared to be a lightning bolt ripping through his skin, starting at his hairline and branching off and down through his eyes, the longest bolt tapering off on the crest of his nose. Despite the painful injury, the child was sleeping softly.

The man had his pointer finger resting firmly at the beginning of the lightning bolt scar, putting slight pressure on the tender flesh. Pressing into it, the man shuddered, and appeared to flicker as if not fully there. Pressing his finger in further, the man gave a deep breath, before flickering again.

The tattered memory of Tom Riddle sat on the porch of number 4 Privet Drive, pressing desperately into the horcrux housed in Harry Potter’s forehead.


	2. I Open at the Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which harry is processing things, Death is a punk rock slut, and Fate thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italics=thoughts

Harry Potter was about to die.

He knew this, logically, and was prepared for it. Well no, actually, he was rather unprepared, but considering how many times he'd almost died in his short life, he was more prepared than one would initially expect.

**I Open at the Close**

Dumbledore was a right bastard for not telling him.

“Don't speak ill of the dead,” he chided himself, looking with trepidation at the resurrection stone lying quietly in his palm. He was half convinced that the thing was watching him back, testing him… mocking him.

**I Open at the Close**

It was definitely mocking him.

Harry Potter stood in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, trying to find a reason to use the bloody thing, and pulling a blank. 

“It's not that I don't want to see my parents, Sirius, and Remus… everyone.” he stopped, thinking, trying to find the right words, “It's just that since I’m about to die and all that, I'll be seeing them awfully soon anyway, so what's really the point, yea?” 

The stone seemed annoyed with him.

He was annoyed with himself too, really. His entire life spent wishing he could talk to his parents, and the first chance he actually has to do it and he's about to die anyway so there's really no point.

While Harry Potter weighed the pros and cons of a impromptu family reunion right before some good ol’ Voldemort induced suicide, the resurrection stone started to heat up. Just barely mind you, and going completely unnoticed by the boy currently holding it. He also didn't notice when the invisibility cloak draped over his head and shoulders started to heat up as well. Nor could he notice that somewhere in an old man's grave, a wand made of elder followed the stone's example, and began to pulse with heat, three brothers requested counsel with Death, and an ancient deity cursed old promises.

Apparently, Harry Potter had come to a decision while this was all happening. Dropping the stone to the forest floor, he continued on the path towards the Death Eaters, towards Voldemort. Harry Potter dropped the invisibility cloak into the dirt several minutes after he dropped the stone, and faced down a killing curse to save his world.

* * *

Harry woke up in what appeared to be a never ending expanse of white. 

“If this is the afterlife it's awfully unimaginative,” he grunted, picking himself off the cold floor. Looking around, he found that it was, strangely enough, a very bleached out version of Kings Cross Station.

“Yea well, you can't blame anyone but yourself for that one.”

Harry turned quickly, finding himself face to chest with a _very_ tall man. Stumbling back several feet with a muffled curse, he looked up at the towering figure, who was observing him with a grimace. 

The man was tall, almost awkwardly so, and was wearing what appeared to be a very high quality black silk shirt that had the first three buttons undone, showing off a muscular but slender build, and black slacks with what appeared to be a metal chain attached to the belt. He wore dress shoes that were also black, and appeared to have been shined to the point of becoming reflective. Looking back up to the man's face, Harry observed that with a strong jaw and unnaturally attractive features, the man was very intimidating, but his face made Harry think that he was actually quite young, maybe his early 20’s. Cementing this idea was the leather jacket thrown over his shoulder, several aggressive-looking piercings on his ears, and a punk-ish haircut. Wild hair on top, much like Harry's own, but with a tight fade on the sides. Harry realized, startled, that the man's eyes were a gold color around the outer edges, with a bright green around the pupil. He had the general appearance of a punk kid that was told to dress formally, and decided to throw a little something extra in the mix to piss off his parents.

“Sorry?” He finally managed.

“Well it's your purgatory, so you made it look this way, not really my fault.”

“Right.” Harry blinked, the American man (apparently, going off his accent) was still there, looking for all the world like he really didn't want to be. 

“Look, can we get this over with?” he said, shifting from one foot to the other, “Fate’s really happy that we get to do this, and I don't wanna sleep on the couch for the next few centuries because things don't go the way she wants, so if you could process this a bit faster I'd really appreciate it.”

“Right.” Harry wasn't processing any faster than he was before, and the man across from him got more and more uncomfortable as the silence stretched on.

“Uhm…” he tried again, “uhhh so I’m dead?”

He got a very tired look for his troubles.

“Yeah, no shit” 

The man (boy? How old is this guy?) sighed before shrugging on the leather jacket, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of one of the pockets as he did so.

“Look, I don't like this any more than you do kid, but the timeline’s been in the shitter since that first Halloween and fate _really_ wants me to fix it.” He lit one, and went back to watching Harry with those weird eyes of his.

Harry's brain was starting to catch up with the conversation, “I'm sorry, did you just say fate? Like the concept of fate?”

“No like the deity Fate, ya know, that sadistic bitch that writes out everyone's lives?”

Harry needed to process some more.

“So who are you then?”

“Death, obviously.”

“Right.”

At this rate Harry was going to be processing things the rest of his afterlife. “Why do I feel like you don't do this for everyone?”

The newly dubbed Death snorted, “I don't do this, ever, but a once in eternity opportunity arose and I've gotta take it.”

“That isn't comforting.”

“Isn't s’posed to be.” Death put out his cig on the bottom of his shoe, and motioned Harry over to a bench. Sitting down, he got comfortable, throwing his arms across the backrest and looking up with a sigh. Harry, much less relaxed and still desperately processing all his new information, sat on the edge of the bench, with his elbows on his knees. They sat quietly for a while, somehow it wasn't awkward at all, but had an air of finality to it that Harry attributed to this being the end of the road for him.

“I'm sending you back in time.”

Or maybe fucking not.

“I'm sorry?” 

“I'm going to send you back in time to fix the timeline.”

**‘I open at the close’**

“And may I ask why the everloving fuck you would do that?” 

Death, to his credit, looked just as enthusiastic about the idea as Harry was feeling, “look kid, things need to go a certain way, and Dumbledore really fucked you up, you've blown so far off course that if I let this opportunity go, Fate would be rewriting things for centuries to try and get history back to how it's supposed to be.”

Harry’s mind was reeling. _Dumbledore? What the hell is he talking about?_

“Sorry, what has Dumbledore got to do with this? Like, I know that he didn't tell me about the prophecy and kept a lot of other things to himself but that was because Voldemort could see into my head and-”

Death cut him off there, “look kid, you were never supposed to fight ol’ Riddle, he was supposed to _help_ you.”

Harry’s brain went catatonic. 

Death, probably realizing that Harry was cycling through the 5 stages of grief in an endless loop while his brain rebooted, continued on with his explanation,

“Fate originally wanted Riddle’s wrath to follow you to Privet Drive and attempt to possess you as an infant-” Harry choked on his saliva, _"-but_ he was going to fail, instead becoming trapped in your mind where all he could really do was talk to you, eventually helping you throughout your Hogwarts career like some sort of fatherly schizophrenic demon.” Harry was starting to question if this original timeline was all that better in comparison to how his life ended up going, Death continued, “Fate explained to me that eventually she was planning on you hunting the rest of his horcruxes down and reuniting them with some sort of ritual that would let Riddle finally die in peace or some sappy shit like that, and then you’d go on with your life, becoming a powerful enchanter or something and die of old age or whatever. It was supposed to be a little weird and kinda traumatic, but overall a nice life, and there _definitely_ wasn't going to be some sort of 2nd wizarding war or whatever that pile of hot garbage ended up being.”

Harry and Death sat in silence for a while after that, Death lit another cig and waited for Harry to be able to form sentences.

“I don't understand where it went wrong,” he finally said, running his hands through his hair, “if Voldemort was supposed to come and try to possess me, what stopped him?”

Death let out an annoyed breath, and Harry realized that he looked kinda like him.

“Dumbledore, in his infinite wisdom, decided to be a big bag of dicks and take control of your life. He took you from Godric's Hollow and brought you to Hogwarts, instead of going straight to the Dursleys like he was supposed to. He noticed the horcrux as well as the, frankly quite impressive, amount of magic you have, and decided that to kill Riddle once and for all he needed to have complete control over you. You've been so strung up on loyalty and compulsion potions that I was half convinced you’d get brain damage. That's not even mentioning the blocks he put on your magic, and the love potions.”

Harry didn't know what to think about that. Dumbledore was obviously manipulative, he knew that years before he died, but he never realized that Dumbledore would go that far to be sure that Harry was in his pocket. Suddenly very angry, he jumped up and began to pace.

“So what am I supposed to do? Go back in time to grab my younger self out of the wreckage at Godric's Hollow? That plan has a lot of bloody holes in it if you hadn't noticed.”

“Yeaaahhh... No, I'm sending your mind as it is now, back into your body from a certain period before you got your Hogwarts letter, I haven't really decided when that's going to be but having two Harry Potters running around is impossible, considering that your body is dead.”

“That's even worse!” Harry was yelling now, “how do you expect me to do anything in the body of a baby?”

“Calm your tits man I'm getting to that.” Death, infuriatingly unaffected by the temper tantrum, took a drag from his cigarette, “I'm sending you back with a few handy abilities that will make all those blocks, compulsions, and potions slide riiight off.” Death seemed very proud of himself. If Harry thought he could get away with it he would slap that smug smile right of the bastards face.

“So everything will work out all fine and dandy?”

“That's the hope.”

“Well that's just bloody brilliant now isn't it,” he was slowly starting to calm down.

“ah” Harry suddenly remembered something that Death had mentioned, “what did you mean by love potions?”

Death took another long drag, “Ginevra Weasley” was all he said. It was enough of an explanation that Harry needed. He slumped, defeated, back onto the bench.

“Is anyone in my life genuinely on my side? Or do I need to start worrying about my friends manipulating me too?” There was a beat of silence, before Death sucked in a breath and looked at him pityingly.

“Oh for fucks sakes-” Harry put his head in his hands.

“Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom were genuine, as well as most of your roommates,” Death started, quickly realizing that by the time this wrapped up Fate was going to realize how long it was taking and come meet the thrice damned boy-who-lived herself, “-but Hermione Granger never cared much about you, and was happy to report your movements back to Dumbledore, most of the Weasley family were being paid hand over fist to keep you on the Light side of the-war-that-never-should-have-happened. Draco Malfoy was more acting up because of politics, but I’m also like 86% sure he had a crush on you, I'm not positive though, love isn't really my area of expertise.” 

Harry started to laugh then, trying to come to terms with everything that had just been unloaded onto him in such a short amount of time. Death let him laugh himself hoarse, being a quiet companion while Harry lost his shit.

“Things are going wonderfully I see?” a mischievous voice spoke up from in front of them. Harry looked up, only to see a woman that had to be the polar opposite of Death. She was very short, curvy and on the plump side, with very curly red hair, her hair was a very light red though, and had blondish highlights. She had a frankly obnoxious amount of freckles, making it look like she had a bunch of weird birthmarks spread across her face, rather than individual dots. She wore a loose white blouse with poofy sleeves that were tied with thin ribbon on different parts of her arms, adding to the poof, that then tapered off around her forearms. She had the blouse tucked into a brown floor length skirt that looked like it was good for twirling, and had no shoes on.

“I've got it handled babe, just lettin’ him process things.” Death spoke up.

 _Babe? Processing? What?”_ Harry was definitely still processing things, but still could understand that the woman in front of him was probably Fate, even though she looked more like what he expected Life to look like.

She smiled at Death in a way that made Harry suddenly feel like a third wheel.

“Well, regardless I still wanted to see him! It was so nice of the Peverell brothers to accept him, ya know?”

Harry stopped understanding what was going on 20 minutes ago, but decided he might as well ask.

“Sorry, what do you mean? The Peverell Brothers as in the Deathly Hallows Peverell Brothers?” he spoke up, wondering if this was related to the ‘once in an eternity opportunity’ that Death had been talking about.

“Yep! See their souls are still semi-connected to those fancy little trinkets, when you were accepted by all of them they got together and called up Death over here and said they'd be sending you on over! Funny that huh?” Fate had an American accent as well, but sounded more southern and peppy in comparison to Death.

...wait what?

“Hold on _what_?”

“Mmhmm! Gave you the Master of Death shabang and everything! I was surprised of course and Death was a grumpy-puss and got all pissy about it but I managed to convince him to work with me on this one! Right honeybear?”

“Yea doll.”

While she was explaining this, Fate all but bounced over to the bench and plopped down on Death's lap like she owned it. 

Deciding to sort Fate and Death’s apparent relationship in the ‘earth shattering but unimportant compared to everything else’ file in his brain, Harry decided to cut to the chase.

“Soooo this Master of Death thing makes it possible for me to come here, and then be sent back to some other point in time?”

Death managed to pull his attention away from one of Fates curls that he was playing with enough to answer affirmative.

“Ok so that means that whatever you do to me besides that is your own deal, right?”

Another yes.

“Alright…” Those answers didn't really answer anything, “-so when are you sending me exactly?”

“Oh OH!” Fate suddenly got excited, “we should send you back to either the day your parents were viciously murdered or to the month before that! To give you enough time to get to know who they were before they are ripped away from you! That’ll be fun!”

Harry was starting to understand what Death meant when he said Fate was a sadist.

“Orrrrr you could send me to a time where I don't have to live the worst decade of my life out again?” He tried, if he had to live with the Dursleys again he was going to kill them once he had functioning hands.

Death spoke up this time.

“We’ll send you back to when Riddle was supposed to get trapped in your mind, so you can talk to him and explain what the situation is, all that jazz. I don't doubt that Dumbledore isn't going to be a manipulative old bitch still but at least you'll have Riddle as an ally this go round.”

 _That's worse!_ Harry thought, _I don't want to have to deal with Voldemort in my head for another 10 years damnit!_

“Yeah... I guess that's the best option.” Fate sighed, looking very put out, “welp, let's get to it!”

“Can we talk about this a bit more?” he started.

“Nope!”

“Wait-”

“Hold on, Babe-”

“Bye bye now!”

"Sorry about this kid."

Harry Potter was then thrust unceremoniously into his infant body, and proceeded to pass out.

* * *

“You really jumped the gun on that one babe.” Death was annoyed, Fate thought it was funny.

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn't know what being the Master of Death even means.”

“...oh.”

“Yea”

They sat there, Fate was trying not to laugh, Death was smoking another cigarette.

“Can't you just go to him and explain it?”

“He needs to summon me.”

“Oh… Whoops?”


	3. The Beginning (?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry discovers the extent of Dumbledore's manipulations, and Voldemort is an annoying little horcrux.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm convinced that the Dursleys are horrible people, but I want to cut Harry some slack, since things are going to go tits up pretty fast, so lets give him a good childhood for once.

A man sat in front of a small bundle on a doorstep.

Inside of the bundle was a boy, breathing softly as his tiny hands clutched the warm blanket he was swaddled in. The boy was just a little over a year old, and had a fresh wound of what appeared to be a lightning bolt ripping through his skin, starting at his hairline and branching off and down through his eyes, the longest bolt tapering off on the crest of his nose. Despite the painful injury, the child was sleeping softly.

The man had his pointer finger resting firmly at the beginning of the lightning bolt scar, putting slight pressure on the tender flesh. Pressing into it, the man shuddered, and appeared to flicker as if not fully there. Pressing his finger in further, the man gave a deep breath, before flickering again.

The tattered memory of Tom Riddle sat on the porch of number 4 Privet Drive, pressing desperately into the horcrux housed in Harry Potter’s forehead. He didn't know how he got to this point, trying to possess a baby. It was pathetic for the dark lord to fall so low so quickly. He shuddered again, and flickered, slowly starting to become more and more transparent. He was running out of time. Tom Riddle pressed his hand desperately into the horcrux, trying to take over the small body. 

_It shouldn't be so difficult to do this,_ he thought despairing, flickering more aggressively as another shudder distorted his form. He started to waver, and his hand sank further into Harry Potter’s forehead. There was a gap in time where nothing moved… and then Tom Riddle gave out and collapsed into the curse scar, unraveling and slipping through the gaping wound, sinking into the boy's skull, and finding a small part of his subconscious to settle into, falling asleep. It was quiet for a time, before the baby appeared to flash gold for a moment, shudder, and settle down again. This time however, 17 year old Harry Potter’s mind had taken residence in the babe as well.

Baby Harry Potter stayed that way for a long time, till the morning in fact, when a woman opened the door to get the morning paper and proceeded to fall backwards in shock. Snatching the letter nestled in the folds of the blanket, she quickly read it. Mumbling curses, she picked the basket up and brought it inside, shutting the door behind her. 

No one was out on the street to witness the blood red wards flicker into existence, or the web of light that criss crossed the red wards inside and out, or to see them all suddenly flicker out of sight. One person felt it though, and woke with a start. Tom Riddle, upon realizing that he did not in fact succeed in possessing Harry Potter, quickly tried to figure out what options he had. He felt for the wards that had woken him up, and finding that the exceptionally strong blood wards had been overlaid by someone with various negative wards, ones pertaining to aggression and hatred, he snarled with disgust. He had no way of taking them down, and in the wrong situation those sorts of behavior changing wards could be deadly to his vessel and by extension him. Not knowing what else to do, he tried to wake the infant. 

_Maybe I can possess the brat for a period and get rid of those blasted things._

* * *

17 year old Harry Potter woke up on a very familiar kitchen table to Petunia and Vernon Dursley arguing loudly, and what seemed like a very pissed off Voldemort screaming in his head.

_Oh bloody buggering FUCK!_

Voldemort went quiet, in what Harry correctly assumed to be shock. Taking advantage of the moderate amount of quiet, Harry quickly tried to assess his situation. Unfortunately, Voldemort got over his shock and quickly started hissing in his ear.

_Listen child, you must allow me to take control of your body. They will only become more agitated as time goes on._

Harry scoffed, at least as well as a baby could, _right, because you're such a people person, they've always been like that, pretending to be the perfect baby or whatever wont change that._ He shot back.

_No you moronic child! There are aggression wards around the house, I need to take control to remove them._

Harry thought a very impolite sentence that made the Dark Lord go quiet in shock for a second time. _Alright what do I need to do._

Voldemort, still reeling, told him. _C-close your eyes and reach out to me with your magic, I'll grab a hold of it and pull myself to the surface._

_How do I know you wont take over permanently?_

_You won't, just do it you pathetic little leach._

Deciding to ignore the irony, Harry did as he was told. The dark lord, now a shard of soul inhabiting a surprisingly intelligent 1 year old, opened his green eyes and got to work. It took several minutes of deep meditation and fumbling on the dark lords part to figure out how to untangle the aggression wards around the property, luckily they were fresh and had been banking on Petunia dursley accepting the child, since she hasn't officially done so, they were still quite weak. Once he got them completely unraveled, Voldemort passed out a second time that day.

* * *

Harry Potter woke up to his aunt warming up a baby bottle. He watched, gobsmacked, as she shook the bottle, and gently (gently!!) pushed it past his lips and held him while he greedly drank the milk. He then watched, almost unbelieving, as Petunia burped him, and brought him upstairs to a shared nursery with baby Dudley. He sat there trying to comprehend what in the fresh hell Voldemort had to have done to make his Aunt a decent human being for several minutes. 

He was cut off, quite rudely, by the dark lord. _Idiot child, the aggression wards made her negative feelings towards you heightened, my question is, how exactly are you having coherent thoughts? You are an infant, even a child of prophecy could not possibly be this advanced._

Thinking quickly, Harry started to explain. _Alright listen here Voldefart this is the situation: Dumbledore apparently fucked up the timeline so heavily that Death and Fate incarnate had to step in and send my mind back in time to fix everything. Death said that you wouldn't be a massive bag of dicks about it but I'm not convinced._

_You infernal child, do you expect me to believe that with no proof?_

_I'm sure you can figure out where my memories are and shuffle through them if you don't believe me._

He attempted just that, but realized very quickly that if this boy was telling the truth, he certainly never practiced occlumency, his mind was a wreck of thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

_Blasted child, I can't get anywhere in this mess of a mind, you'll need to build up occlumency barriers and sort through everything._

Harry nearly blushed in embarrassment, but it quickly led to indignation, y _our favorite potions master said that I'm a lost cause in occlumency._

 _Severus?_ The Dark lord questioned, _that is of no matter, if I am truly stuck in your mind, I might as well attempt to do it myself._

* * *

Harry Potter was a quiet baby, as observed by the Dursleys, and exceptionally well behaved. He had an impressive appetite though, and whenever it was mealtime, Harry would eat twice as much as little Dudley would. They could already tell that Harry would be tall, he was growing at an incredible rate, the same height as Dudley, who was older, though thinner than him. Petunia had some initial disgust at seeing her horrid sisters spawn, but then she looked into those big green eyes and remembered sweet little Lily, before she was swept away to Hogwarts.

 _If Lily couldn't save her son from a life as an orphan, I'll give him the next best thing._ She thought, warming up a bottle of milk for the babe. He drank it with what she almost thought was wonder in his eyes, and she decided then and there that Lily Evans’ boy would grow up right and proper. Wizard kind be damned.

* * *

Harry Potter was coming to some conclusions. The first being that Voldemort had to be the most melodramatic little monster that ever lived. In his process of building up occlumency walls for Harry, he continuously complained about absolutely everything. Doing this while also insulting Harry in every way imaginable. It was easier to handle than a murderous dark lord trying to kill him, but still bloody annoying. The second being that a Petunia Dursley that isn't under the effects of aggression and hate wards was possibly the most doting mother on the planet. He really should have seen it coming considering how she treated Dudley in his first timeline, but really the woman was giving him everything he asked for! His baby body required an almost inhuman amount of food and she just cooed about how he was going to be ‘ _such a big strong lad’._ Vernon was just as bad, boasting about how cute he was and how the neighbors would be incredibly jealous that their nephew was ‘ _such a looker Pet, him and Dudley will be lady killers once they grow’._ Hell, Petunia even cleaned and disinfected his scar, gently apologizing if the disinfectant stung. 

“You poor dear, once this thing is all healed up I'll look into getting some scar ointment to make it fade faster, such a brave little thing,” she would coo at him, all the while Harry was cursing Dumbledore and what those hate wards could have created.

Regardless of his new experience in a functional, not abusive household, life went on. Voldemort was mostly quiet after the first few months, now just making sarcastic quips here and there, mostly just working on perfecting Harry’s occlumency shields before going onto organizing his mind into a perfect recreation of Hogwarts grounds and castle. 

_I have constructed the chamber of secrets._ He boasted one day while Harry was busy mushing up his peas. _Anyone who manages to find it will have to know parseltongue, which I know you can speak… yes I did find that memory boy and I don't appreciate you destroying my diary… stop laughing you menace!_

Harry had to admit, it was an ingenious idea, the chamber in his mind was created to house Voldemort's memories, and his consciousness when he didn't feel like watching a toddler go about his daily activities. Harry wasn't skilled enough to enter his mind through meditation quite yet, so he couldn't see it, but Voldemort waxed poetic about the grand library that housed all his memories, and the adjacent study for… plotting or something, the bedroom that would be almost never used, but was just as grand as the rest of it. He heard about it all… several times… it was getting annoying really.

Harry’s 3rd birthday came and went, and the one thing that upset the waters of his happy little family was his apparent inability to talk. Not that he couldn't, just that he was worried he would slip and say something that a 3 year old shouldn't.

_Just pretend to be a prodigy or something you fool._

_That is what I'm trying to avoid you idiot!_

He eventually just decided to find a happy medium. It was rocky at first sure, but him finally talking, albeit with a very impressive vocabulary for a toddler, quelled his Aunt’s fears about his intelligence, and everything was right as rain again.

Until he accidentally summoned Death, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't decided what house Harry is going to be in, leave your fav in the comments if you please!


	4. O' Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death finally gets to explain the whole MoD business, and Voldemort plots to fix his amnesia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try and get all the pre-Hogwarts chapters out today, since its my easy day in school I've got the time to do it.

It had been a complete accident in hindsight, but at the time it seemed like it was all Voldemort’s fault.

Harry had been playing with a toy car, while having a mental cat fight with Voldemort. Voldemort had been getting better about insulting him, and instead had been settling for sarcasm and heated arguments about the first timeline.

_ It's not my fault you turned into that snake faced monster Voldemort. _

_ Of course it is you menace, your blood was faulty. _

_ Where's your proof? _

_ Your face is my proof! _

_ Oh reeeal mature! _

So on and so forth. 

Harry still couldn't go and talk to the bastard in his head face to face yet so they settled for this. Dudley was in the room as well, eating a crayon. Harry was starting to feel the effects of having a moody dark lord in his head and a stupid toddler as his only companion.

“I'm the smartest bloody person in this room!” he finally yelled out, sending Voldemort into loud peals of laughter that rattled his skull.

“Nuh-uh” and Dudley was still a bloody toddler.

“This is all Death's fault, I wish I could get my hands on that bastard.”

Harry, almost immediately regretted his words, as there was a painfully loud screech that made him fall to the floor and cover his ears in pain, and an impossibly bright flash of light. The world went still.

“Fucking finally.” 

Harry looked to the rocking chair in the corner to see Death lounging in it, looking for all the world like he didn't just rip apart the very fabric of reality. He was wearing the same general outfit as before, except this time the silk shirt was deep Slytherin green. Voldemort made a noise of appreciation in his head.  _ That's Death, dumbass.  _ A squeak of fear echoed in his skull.  _ Wuss. _

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Death took out a cig and started smoking.  _ Is that all he does?  _ Looking around, Harry realized that Dudley had gone still, with his hand up in the air and seemed to be in the process of tipping backwards, he was frozen in place.  _ Cool. _

“You finally decided to summon me, so here I am.”

“Summon you?”

“You said my title, which is as good as summoning me, all things considered.”

_ Right, Master of Death and all that.  _ “What do you mean by title? Death isn't your name?”

“Nope, I am a god after all, not a personification.”

Harry took a moment to digest this, he was getting better with huge revelations.

“So what's your name then? What's Fate’s?”

“My name is Athimus, and Fate’s is Genevieve.”

_ What?  _ “Why is her name so common compared to yours? I've never heard the name Athimus before.”

Death took a few puffs before responding, “we are created with a name that is given to us by the universe, I've never felt like changing mine with the times, while Genevieve changes her’s every few centuries, to mix things up.”

_ That makes some sort of sense.  _ Switching gears towards more pressing concerns, he continued, “soooo what do I do with you now that you're here and time is… indisposed.”

Death snorted, and took another drag, “Well, Fate jumped the gun the last time we talked, and I didn't get the chance to explain what being the Master of Death actually entails.”

Harry thought back to that conversation and realized the death god was right, he didn't have a bloody clue about his new title. “Can you explain it to me then?”

“Yea duh,'' the newly dubbed Athimus put his cigarette out on the rocking chairs arm rest and started explaining, “as the Master of Death, you have a lot of power over... you guessed it! Death. You're a natural necromancer, which isn't a thing that just happens, mind you, so be grateful. You can also summon me to do little things here and there. For instance, if someone's death wouldn't affect the timeline  _ too _ horribly, I'll kill them for you. Not all the time though, in some instances my fear of being in the dog house is going to come before my duty as your servant.” Harry found it really funny how much control fate had over death, though in hindsight it wasn't that surprising. Death continued, “you also have two choices after dying, submitting to me and joining the dead in the afterlife, or going on the be reincarnated with your memories intact. Part of being my master is that you can't be controlled, which is why the compulsions and such aren't working anymore, even though they're still technically on you.”

“I'm sorry  _ what _ ?!”  _ “excuse me??”  _ Harry and Voldemort said at the same time, though it was unknown if Athimus could hear the dark lord in Harry's head.

Regardless, the death god rolled his eyes, “I can't control the world of the living by myself, ya know, you have to request my counsel first, so I couldn't just take them off. But! They're completely ineffective, and the blocks were obliterated by your magic when you were sent back.”

“How can I get them removed?” Even if they weren't doing anything, Harry and Voldemort both agreed that they didn't want those things on him.

“You could go to the goblins at Gringotts to get a purge, but I don't recommend it.”

_ “I don't trust this so-called god of death.” _ “Why the bloody hell not?” 

Death seemed to be secretly laughing at both of them, “Dumbledore can tell if they've been removed, idiot, he did place them after all. He’ll get suspicious of you if you waltz into Hogwarts with no compulsions or loyalty potions or… whatever on you. Don't be a brash idiot and try to actively antagonize him in his own damn school.”

That made a certain amount of sense, and Harry (and Voldemort, though he wouldn't have admitted it) felt sufficiently cowed. “So it's fine to just leave them there?”

“Yep, though I do recommend going to the goblins anyway, you'll need an inheritance test to see what sort of titles you have, as well as what other shit Fate decided to give you.”

Harry felt dread pool in his chest, if the goddess of fate decided to saddle him with something, who knows what it'll be. Voldemort, having found and watched the memory of the encounter, was also growing nervous.

Putting his trepidation aside for another day, Harry pressed on, “is there anything else?”

“Well, I guess you can't be killed.” Death said, as if it wasn't a huge bloody deal.

“Sorry?”

“You can't be killed, you'll only ever die of old age.”

“Oh”

“Mhm.”

Death left shortly after that, with the parting words of no, he wasn't going to kill Dolores Umbridge, and yes, he couldn't, because Fate absolutely loves the woman.

* * *

After the thrice be damned god of death had finally left, Voldemort felt himself relax into his chair. It wasn't that he was afraid of the god, just that he was afraid of what he could do, and that was perfectly reasonable, all things considered. 

Riddle sighed, taking another sip of his scotch. He was trapped in his mindscape.  _ What's left of it anyway _ , he thought glumly. A downside of making horcruxes, he had found years ago, is that his mind separated from the rest of itself along with his soul. This meaning that he couldn't recall over half of his life, about 5-10 years per horcrux, depending on how big the soul piece was. His memories of those times were fuzzy at best, he knew what he had learned in those years of course, but couldn't remember how or when or why. 

_ I'll need to find a way to contact the others. _ He had realized a few years back, that as he was now a horcrux, and didn’t have any soul left that wasn't inhabiting an object (or a toddler). And that, since he was the main soul, he could likely speak to the other horcruxes and request (read steal) their memories to put in his library.

It was risky, of course. He knew himself well, and he wasn't very trusting, especially of himself. If he was even able to convince the horcruxes to talk to him, it was doubtful that would just hand over the memories.

_ Might as well start with the biggest and youngest,  _ he thought with a smirk, getting up from his seat to walk towards the western wall of the library. His library was long, starting at the southern wall was his earliest memories in shelves, and each library shelf got progressively newer, going forward to the northern end with the most recent. Most of the first 50 or so shelves were embarrassingly bare, with only his knowledge/ what he learned about during those years filling them. The northernmost wall had a seating area and a fireplace smack in the middle of the wall, with two doors or either side, the left one being to his study, and the right to his bedroom. On the eastern side was a door, it was huge and circular, with 7 snakes coiled around the large circular handle in the middle. Voldemort knew that the other side was the exact same. That was the door out into Harry Potter's mind, and was at the current moment, sealed tight. On the western side was 5 doors, each one with a label.  _ Diary, Ring, Locket, Cup, Diadem. _ He stood in front of the door labeled Diary. Knocking back the rest of his scotch, he banished the glass, and threw open the door.

It was a hallway, long and grand, with old stone and suits of armor lining the walls. Hogwarts.

_ Perfect _ . 

He smirked once more, before strolling through the door into his teenage self’s mind.

The door shut firmly behind him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh! What sarcastic conversations will Voldemort have with the sassy teen tom riddle? Only time will tell.


	5. Everyone is Plotting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life for harry potter is settling down, but the powers that be are shifting, people plot from the shadows of the mind and benevolent protectors of the light plan far in the future.

Harry Potter was a very smart child by most standards. Petunia Dursley was momentarily stunned when he waddled up to her on his chubby legs and yelled indignantly, “Dudley is chewing crayons!” She then quickly ran to the nursery to stop her son.

Vernon Dursley had come to a similar conclusion about his nephew, and took it upon himself to boast about how smart and strong his son and nephew were to everyone at Grunnings, “the boys are already showing talents at three! Dudley, the good Dursley he is, is a good strong boy, definitely a boxer, and sweet Harry is already speaking in full sentences! It's nurture over nature I tell ya!” 

And indeed it was, Harry Potter was flourishing under the loving care of his relatives, and Dumbledore was none the wiser, in fact, the man was already making plans for Harry's school years. 

Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, sat in his office and plotted. No, plotting is a negative term, he was planning. Making contingency plans. Fighting passively for the good of the wizarding world.

He had many people to help him in his plans, the Weaselys were a good, light family that would be happy to take Harry under their wing, Ronald was a good contender for a best friend, and Ginevera had the making of a phenomenal Lady Potter. He was hoping to find another friend for the Potter spawn, having two is better than one after all. Besides, it was difficult to tell how Ronald will turn out at the current time, the boy was awfully young still. Nothing that a few compulsions wouldn’t fix but alas, it was best to not throw around personality altering spells like lemon drops.

Sirius Black was a wild card, Dumbledore frowned, he wasn't sure what the man would do if he ever escaped Azkaban, but nothing good. He popped a lemon drop in his mouth, nothing that couldn't be planned for, he was sure.

Severus was also a worry, it was no telling if the hatred compulsion on the man would hold if Harry didn't rise to the bait and hate the potions professor back. Perhaps he would deliver the boys Hogwarts letter himself and see to adding a few compulsions?  _ Ah well.  _ There was time to plan,  years to get everything sorted and all the wrinkles ironed out.

Headmaster Dumbledore sat back and smiled, assured that all was well.

In another part of the castle, one Minerva Mcgonagall was also planning, she had initially been worried about sweet Harry Potter going to live with those muggles, and against her better judgment she had gone to check on the lad. Being pleasantly surprised when she found a happy, healthy family with Harry Potter smack dab in the middle of it, she went on her way. The transfiguration professor of Hogwarts had no illusions that the boy’s reintegration into the wizarding world would be difficult, but for now, all was well.

* * *

All was not well with Tom Riddle.

Things were rather horrible actually. His older self had just waltzed through a door that came out of nowhere and proceeded to tell him his fate, and what a fate it was. 

He wasn't moping, future (past?) dark lords don't mope, and they certainly don't allow their future selves to make off with all their memories, so why was Voldemort running off to the Hogwarts library...

“HEY!” Tom Riddle raced after his older self, he may be a horcrux but so was this bastard, why should he let that failure of a dark lord get away with stealing his memories!?”

“I am your better, child!” the dark lord yelled over his shoulder, “submit to my authority!”

“You were killed by an infant! Any authority you hold is nil!” Tom Riddle screamed back, now very cross with his current predicament.

Quite suddenly, the older Tom Riddle stopped and turned to face him, slowing to a stop, they both took a moment to catch their breath, glaring at each other all the while.

“I have a proposition for you, child,” the dark lord started, “combine with me, so we can grow stronger in the Potter spawns mind. The damned death god insisted that we could not remove ourselves from his person until his death, but if more of our soul is inside him, we will be able to take control of his body for longer periods than a few minutes. Combine with me.”

The boy considered that for a moment. From what the failure had said about their current predicament, the Potter brat had let them take control at nights, but they had only been able to go a few minutes at a time, and was kicked back into their mindscape when the boy woke.

“I suppose that is the best outcome for you, is it not?’ he finally replied, “but what do I get in return?”

The other dark lord mumbled something about try-hard Slytherins before replying, “you are me and i am you, we both know that combining is the best outcome for both of us.”

Teenager Tom Riddle smirked, “very well then, I will combine with you, but the others won't be so willing.”

“ _ ~I don't need anything from the others besides their memories, child.~ _ ” the dark lord hissed out in parseltongue, becoming agitated with the little brat.

“ _ ~fine fine, shall we then, failure?~ _ ”

“ _ ~stop calling me that, you pathetic little welt~”  _

The future and past dark lord returned to Harry Potter’s mind as one, and began plotting Albus Dumbledore's downfall, now with book shelves that were slightly more full.

* * *

Harry Potter had a feeling that people were plotting. Sure, this was unsurprising to him, he had a megalomaniac in his head and a controlling old goat on the horizon after all. But he couldn't do much in his current predicament, he was three damnit! What was he supposed to do besides play with blocks and eat an unholy amount of food?

_ At least I can be sure I'll be tall this go round,  _ he t hought glumly, he had been rather short as men go in his first life, and he was going to make sure that this time he’ll be as healthy as possible.

_ I wonder how old I'll have to be to get Aunt Petunia to take me to Gringotts. I'll have to convince her one way or another, pretty sure she still hates magic. _

_ Would you think quietly brat, I'm trying to plot,  _ Voldemort hissed in his ear. Rolling his eyes, Harry settled down further into his Aunt's lap, twitching his nose as he felt the beginning of a sneeze. 

_ Wait a bloody moment, H _ arry realized something, V _ oldemort, you could teach me about politics and dark magic right? _

_ Obviously.  _ The dark lord drawled,  _ but I refuse to teach you anything this way, figure out how to come in here first. _

Harry started to pout,  _ bastard. _

_ Leach. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is going to be a summary of the next 8 years, and then the one after that picks back up to harry at 11, so you know what that means! (it means if you have an opinion about what house Harry should be in, you should let it be known soon)


	6. Life Goes On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summary of Harry Potter's life leading up to his 11th birthday, as well as a few other developments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a lot of fun to churn out, mostly because sometimes you have a lot of ideas and not enough time to put them all down in detail.  
> I glossed over Tom bullying the other horcruxes into giving up their memories, mostly because it isn't all that important to the plot.

Harry Potter did eventually figure out how to reach into his mindscape, he succeeded in it on his fifth birthday, nearly falling out of bed when it happened. After getting the hang of it though, the first thing Harry did was cuss out Tom Riddle face to face. The bastard just laughed at him, and gave him a tour.

Harry had admitted, very quietly, that the mindscape and occlumency barriers were very impressive, which did absolutely no good for the dark lord's ego, mind you. 

They were though, impressive that is. With a quidditch pitch that held all Harry's memories about the sport, as well as the Castle recreated perfectly to Harry and Tom’s memories of the place, with sprawling hallways filled with paintings of past memories, as well as a cozy Gryffindor common room, with more personal but still pleasant memories. Harry found it quite funny how the Headmasters office had all his most hated memories, and the Slytherin common rooms held all his secrets.

The only thing that was different really, was the forbidden forest, which sprawled in all directions, filled to the brim with all manner of creatures that had never before been in residence. 

“It's called a barrier for a reason, leach. It’s supposed to be impenetrable,” is what Tom had told him when he asked, “and someone has to first get past the mile wide canyon surrounding the perimeter if they even want to get to the forest.”

There was a lot of boasting on Tom's part that day, but once it was all said and done, he held to his promise and started the difficult (his words) task of teaching Harry pureblood politics and the darkest of magic.

It was surprisingly easy to do dark magic for Harry, and he wasn't sure why till he was seven, when he managed to meditate long enough to see his core for the first time. Death had not been lying when he said it was impressively big, but it was also perfectly gray. Harry eventually called up Death to ask about that detail, and got a crash course in necromancy magic.

Apparently, his core had actually been on the darker side his first life, “due to the trauma and Riddle, mostly” is how the death god put it. 

“So you would have thought that your core would be lighter this go round, but due to you being the Master of Death, and death being a constant moderator, your core is always going to be perfectly in the middle, same with your morals, most likely.”

“That's why true necromancers are so rare (read nonexistent), it's because you have to be perfectly balanced with your magic to even begin on the path towards learning it.”

Athimus ended the conversation by handing him an old book and telling him to read it. The book, Harry soon found, was A Beginner's Guide to Necromancy (yes, that was literally the title, who knew Death was so to the point).

Thus started Harry’s descent into the wonderful world of necromancy. He started small, with birds and squirrels, but by the time he turned 10 he was killing and bringing back to life several of Mrs. Figg's kneazles.

 _It's payback!_ He insisted to Tom one day, as he mixed up some kneazle blood to save for later. _She was in kahoots with Dumbledore my entire childhood in the last life, she had obviously seen the abuse._

“I'm not saying it isn't warranted, leach,” Tom replied, the nickname having stuck after so many years, turning from an insult to something more endearing. Considering the boy's newer taste for blood, it was more accurate than it used to be. _Really,_ thought Tom Riddle, _the child had started out angry and confused, and has turned into a bloodthirsty little monster_.

“Don't you think that the squib might catch on at some point? You're quite literally killing and drinking the blood of her pets.”

Harry had to admit that his new taste for blood was a little odd, but Death assured him that it was just a side effect of his necromancy training.

_I know how to be subtle, Tommy._

“Stop calling me that, child.”

* * *

Petunia Dursley did in fact still hate magic, but it was more of a wary, my-little-sister-was-killed-by-magic-and-I-don't-want-the-same-for-her-son sort of hate, and when he had shyly asked her why weird things happened around him, she sat him down and explained everything that she knew. Naturally, the second step was to convince her to take him to Diagon Alley, which was also surprisingly easy. They just wandered around for a while, but she had refused to take him into the wizarding bank after she saw the goblins.

“If you need to go in there to get money for school things that's just fine love, but I won't be going anywhere near those little beasts till then.”

Harry submitted himself to the knowledge that he would just have to wait till his letter came.

 _At least Dudley is intelligent enough this go round._

Dudley Dursley was in fact, quite a bit nicer this time as well, without his parents feeling compelled to spoil him, he grew up to be a strong but gentle hearted boy. Harry thought that he was still a bit slow, but _being a himbo is better than being a bully,_ he reasoned.

Harry also grew up different than the first time, he was healthy, and had a fair bit of muscle on his arms from carving up various animals. He had realized that he and Death looked quite a bit alike, and asked his Aunt if he could get a similar haircut done, liking the look. After describing what he wanted, she adamantly refused to get him a fade, but was happy to get the sides shaved closer to the head, which actually helped make the untamable mess appear more stylish than unkempt.

By the time Harry was 11, he was a tall, strong child, with piercing green eyes, and an odd scar that raced down his forehead, branching off across his eyes, the longest bolt ending at the tip of his nose. Some things never changed, he reasoned, but he was still quite happy with how he looked, even though (despite his aunt's best efforts) his lightning bolt scar was still as prominent as ever. Though Vernon had assured him (and Petunia) that it looked more like a birthmark.

* * *

As Harry grew up in his happy little home, Dumbledore and his pawns grew as well. Ronald Weasely had grown up with a drive to prove himself, something that the Headmaster happily exploited. The boy wasn't subtle by any means, but Dumbledore had found a smart young muggleborn girl that would do well to reign him and Harry in, if they were ever to go off the rails. Hermione Granger was a ravenclaw through and through, though her lack of friends during childhood made her become quite blunt and stubborn. 

_It would be difficult to convince the hat of Gryffindor for that one,_ he fretted over it all week after the girl turned 10, and finally decided that he would try and convince her first. 

_If she wants it enough, the hat will oblige,_ he reasoned. 

Ginevra Weasely was also growing up to be exactly what he wanted, she had an obsession over the boy-who-lived, and was convinced that once she met him they would live happily ever after. Molly was over the moon, and begged Dumbledore to create a marriage contract for the two. It worried him a tad, both of the children had to be present to give blood for a true marriage contract, but he reasoned that the boy wouldn't know the difference between a legal and a forged one. By the time Hogwarts letters were being sent out for the class of 1998, Dumbledore was fully prepared for the boy-who-lived to arrive at Hogwarts.

At least, that's what he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will take a while longer than the others to complete, because it is going to go in depth about the trip to Diagon Alley for his school supplies, and many more fun things. Draco will also be introduced next chapter.  
> (it will also be the last chance for people to put in their votes for a house, we have slytherin and hufflepuff in the lead right now, funny enough.)


	7. A Letter and Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter receives an owl from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and meets a new friend(?). Going shopping in Diagon Alley, Harry clarifies some things and Tom has a few revelations. What is in store for the boy-who-lived once he goes to Hogwarts? Only time will tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooohhh boy was this one a handful, I stayed up till 2 am last night to finish it, and edited it in the middle of my algebra lecture this morning. I really wanted to get it out early today so I could finish up the first Hogwarts chapter with enough time to post it tonight. Hope you like it!

It was a nice Wednesday afternoon, and Harry Potter was lounging on the bottom bunk of his bunk bed in the room he shared with his cousin, Dudley. At first he would have been nervous about the bunk beds, but considering the weight that Dudley has fortunately not put on in this timeline, him being on the top bunk was no longer that big of an issue. 

Today was a very special day for Harry, that being that today was the day his Hogwarts letter was set to arrive. 

Harry remembered what had happened last time and was thankful again for Tom's interference in the aggression wards.

_Please, you couldn't go a day without my interference in anything._

_Well at least I don't have to piggyback on someone else._

_Leech._

_Hypocrite._

Yeah, nothing had changed much since that first day in the new timeline. Tom calmed down a tad, and seemed less murderous or indignant. Well… he was always indignant about something, Harry usually just left him to his plotting.

“Harry? Lunch is ready love.”

“Coming Aunt Petunia!”

Harry meandered down the stairs, jumping over the one at the bottom that creaks out of habit. Walking into the kitchen, he gave his aunt a kiss on the cheek and tucked in.

“Today is the day that letter comes in, isn't it boy?” Vernon still called him that, but it was more affectionate this time. Sure, the first few times he said it Harry broke out in cold sweats, but he's used to it now.

“Yea it's s’posed to, when should we go shop for supplies?”

Vernon leaned back and thought for a moment, “well... I've got a meeting tomorrow, so it'll have to be the day after.” he nodded, already decided it seemed.

“Sounds alright to me.”

They ate in silence for a while before Harry got up with his empty plate, setting it down in the sink. On his way out the back door he grabbed the bush trimmers, planning on working on the garden (read torment Mrs. Figg’s cats).

“Harry, use the gloves dear, you got a nasty scratch the last time you trimmed the roses.”

“Oh! Ok, thank you auntie,” that scratch was from one of the cats. It had put up a bit of a fight, the little shit.

“It's alright love.”

The Dursleys still didn't like magic much, but they didn't see the harm in letting Harry go to the school, Lily had gone on and on about how amazing it was, and Petunia didn't have the heart to refuse him the experience.

_Do you think we’ll find a snake today, Tom?_

_It's a good day for them to be out, lots of sunny spots._

_You’d know that, of course, because you're a snake yourself._

_Quiet, leech._

Harry stuck his tongue out at the rose bush, it didn't have the desired effect. Sighing, he decided to prune the rose bushes for a while before sneaking around the house and nabbing a cat.

_“~small two leg, scaring away my food, shoo!~”_

He looked down to see an extremely colorful snake slithering through the grass, it looked like the floor of an 80’s themed bowling alley, with a neon blue stripe across its back, and neon pink dots on the sides and an equally pink head.

 _What is a California garter snake doing in Surrey?_ Tom questioned.

_Of course you would know the exact species._

_“~Hey, what are you doing in Surrey?~”_ he asked the newly dubbed California Garter, crouching down and holding his hand out to the snake.

 _“Oh! Small two legs is a speaker, how quaint.~”_ the snake reached out and started coiling up Harry’s arm, _“~stupid big two legs took me from mother, long journey brought me here.~”_

 _“~Ah, that's unfortunate for you, I'm sure.~”_ Harry surmised that the snake must have broken out of the nearby zoo.

 _Forgot your empathy at the dinner table, Harry?_ Tom quipped dryly.

_Like you're one to talk, snake face._

Over the years, Harry started to develop a different perspective on life, it was difficult for him to really sympathize with others, and generally felt more like an observer than a player in the game. After re-assessing his first conversation with Death and Fate, he realized that the stunted emotions he was feeling had to be an emotional side-effect of being the Master of Death, since Death acted much the same way. He didn't find himself all that upset about it though. Tom just thought it was funny, but Tom’s a megalomaniac and a sadist, so maybe that wasn't a good thing.

The sound of flapping wings broke him out of his thoughts. Looking up, he saw an owl swoop down and land on his shoulder. The garter snake hissed at it and slithered off him, disappearing into the bushes.

“Are you here with my letter?” Harry questioned, ignoring Tom moping about the snake running off.

The owl gave him a critical look before holding its leg out. Taking the letter, Harry told the owl to stay there and went inside with the letter.

“Aunt Petunia! The letters here!”

Looking down at it, he tore it open and looked at the two papers inside…

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY**

**Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore**

**(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc. Chf. Warlock,**

**Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)**

**Harry Potter**

**#4 Privet Drive, Little**

**Whinging, Surrey**

**The Second Bedroom**

**Dear Mr. Potter**

**We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.**

**Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.**

**Yours sincerely,**

**Minerva McGonagall**

**Deputy Headmistress**

Handing the letter to his aunt to read, Harry looked over the list, suddenly nostalgic.

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY**

**UNIFORM**

**First-year students will require:**

  * **Three sets of plain work robes (black**


  * **One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear**


  * **One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)**


  * **One winter cloak (black, with silver fastenings)**



**Please note that all pupil’s clothes should carry name tags.**

**COURSE BOOKS**

**All students should have a copy of each of the following:**

**The standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)**

**By Miranda Goshawk**

**A History of Magic**

**By Bathilda Bagshot**

**Magical Theory**

**By Adalbert Waffling**

**A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration**

**By Emeric Switch**

**One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi**

**By Phyllida Spore**

**Magical Drafts and Potions**

**By Arsenius Jigger**

**Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them**

**By Newt Scamander**

**The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection**

**By Quentin Trimble**

**OTHER EQUIPMENT**

**1 wand**

**1cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)**

**1 set glass or crystal phials**

**1 telescope**

**1 set of brass scales**

**Students may also bring, if they desire, and owl OR a cat OR a toad**

**PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS**

**ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICK**

Harry looked up to see his aunt bustling around the kitchen for some paper and an envelope.

“Alright dear, would you like me to write it?”

“Yes please auntie.”

Ten minutes later, Harry was seeing the owl off.

_Stop moping about the snake Tom, she was awfully gaudy anyway._

Tom huffed, before saying something very rude about Harry’s mother.

_Oh so that's how you wanna play, eh Riddle?_

_“~Is the little two legs speaker still there?~”_

Harry sighed, and crouched down to look in the bushes, _“~hello again, did you decide to come back?~”_ The snake peered at him for a moment, before slithering up his arm and into his shirt collar, settling around his midsection, _“~little two legs speaker smells like death, you shall be mine now, death smelling little two legs speaker~”_

 _Did wizards get the idea for obnoxiously long titles from snakes by chance?_ He cheekily asked Tom.

_Quiet leech, let me talk to her._

_Nah._

_“~so what's your name, fashion disaster?~”_

_“~I am called_ _Thamnophis Sirtalis infernalis, thank you for asking, death smelling little two legs speaker.~”_

Harry was getting sick of this snake's weird nicknaming habits, _“~my name is Harry, you do know that Thamnophis Sirtalis infernalis is your scientific name, right?~”_

The snake slithered back up his chest and poked her head out of his shirt _, “~what is science, Harry?~”_

_“~Don't worry about it, can I call you Thasin? It's a mix of all your names and is faster to say.~”_

The snake seemed to consider it for a moment, before making a nodding motion and curling around his middle.

_Harrrrrryyy, you demon spawn, let me speak to her!_

_Stop lusting after snakes, you weirdo._

* * *

It was a hot Friday morning that the Dursleys (minus Dudley, as he had boxing practice) and Harry all piled into the car to drive across town to the Leaky Cauldron. Vernon wasn't planning on going with them to the wizarding world, instead deciding to get some groceries.

Petunia had been kind enough to help Harry cover up his scar with some foundation to make him less recognizable. He itched at the powder, how women caked that stuff on their faces every day was beyond him.

Stepping into the Leaky Cauldron, though, he was glad she did. There were more people there than usual, and he would likely have been mobbed, but with the sunglasses and neat muggle clothing he was wearing, no one would have seen him as Harry Potter.

Walking through the crowd, the barkeep Tom was kind enough to let them through the wall.

_You two share more than just a name eh? He looks just like you!_

_I'll skin you alive, leech._

Walking down the streets of Diagon Alley for the first time in over a decade, Harry felt… detached. This place was familiar, sure, but there was very little of the wonder and happiness that he had felt in all his past times going.

 _Awww, is the wittle baby sociopath analyzing his emotions again?_ Tom mocked in a baby voice.

_If you don't stop being a dick, I'll convince the hat to put me in Hufflepuff._

A sharp, almost unbearable pain went through his scar. Good, let the bastard throw a temper tantrum.

Arriving at the steps of Gringotts, Harry and his aunt went up and into the bank. Harry could tell that she was nervous about the whole thing, and decided to save them both from some trouble.

“Auntie? I can go talk to the goblins by myself if you like. There's benches over on that wall you can sit on.”

After getting rid of the dead weight, Harry marched up to the nearest teller, “I'd like to speak to the Potter accounts manager sir.”

The goblin sneered at him, “do you have your key?”

 _Fuck_. “I’m afraid not sir, is there any way to prove my identity?”

The goblin huffed and got off his chair, “follow me.” He led Harry down a side door into a hallway of offices, reaching the door labeled “Griphook”.

“Inside.” He walked in, sitting down on one of the provided chairs in front of the desk. The door slammed shut with a _thud_ , looking around, he saw various weapons adorning the walls, some still had dried blood on them.

_These are my kind of people._

Tom was still sulking, and didn’t respond.

After several minutes of taking in the décor, the door slammed open again with another _thud_ , looking up, Harry took in his account manager, who was indistinguishable from the other goblins except for some very sharp looking meat hooks hanging from his belt.

_Do you reckon he got his name for carrying those things around, or he just decided to wear them because of it._

Tom continued to be a brat and sulk.

“You are the one pretending to be heir Potter?”

 _Off to a great start_. “No sir, I am Harry Potter.”

The goblin glanced at his head.

 _Oh_.

“I'm wearing muggle cosmetics to cover up my scar, you know, so I don't get mobbed...sir.”

The goblin hummed, and pulled out a nasty looking dagger and a sheet of paper, “we’ll see about that, whoever you are, this is an inheritance test, it'll tell us exactly who you are. Three drops of blood on the parchment.”

Shrugging, Harry grabbed the dagger- _oh look at her Tom, isn't she a beauty?_ \- before making a small incision on his pointer finger and squeezing three drops of blood onto the parchment. Waiting a few moments, words started to appear.

**Hadrian James Potter**

**Age: 10**

**DOB: 31 July, 1980**

**Core: Gray (50% light, 50% dark)**

**Mother: Lily Elenore Potter nee. Evans (deceased)**

**Father: James Fleamont Potter (deceased)**

**Godfather: Sirius Orion Black (detained)**

**Godmother: Alice Longbottom nee. Fortescue (incapacitated)**

**Magical Guardian: Albus Dumbledore**

**Titles:**

**Heir Potter (by blood) Votes on Wizengamot: 2**

**Heir Slytherin (by conquest) Votes on Wizengamot: 12**

**Heir Gaunt (by conquest) Votes on Wizengamot: N/A**

**Heir Riddle (by conquest) Votes on Wizengamot: N/A**

**Second in line for black heirship. Votes on Wizengamot: 9**

**Master of Death (by abnormal, once in an eternity circumstances) Votes on Wizengamot: N/A**

**Total possible votes: 23**

**Vaults:**

**Harry Potter Trust vault: 10,348 galleons, 36 sickles, 64 knutts**

**Potter Main Vault: 275,967 galleons, 5,990 sickles, 42 knutts, 39 assorted family heirlooms, 12 family portraits, 59 pieces of family jewelry, 408 tomes**

**Various Gifted Vaults: 2,390,054 galleons, 298 sickles, 10,032 knutts, 3 portraits, 12 pieces of jewelry, 28 tomes**

**Black Vault (unable to access as second in line): 6,349,843 galleons, 2,497 sickles, 2 knutts, 48 assorted family heirlooms, 18 portraits, 74 pieces of family jewelry, 37 tomes**

**Potions and spells in effect:**

**Dragon Pox vaccine: administered by Lily Potter on 1 June, 1980 (still in effect)**

**Compulsion to trust Albus Dumbledore: administered by Poppy Pomfrey, 1 November, 1981 (ineffective)**

**Compulsion to trust Weasley Family: administered by Poppy Pomfrey, 1 November, 1981 (ineffective)**

**Compulsion to stay with Dursley family: administered by Poppy Pomfrey, 1 November, 1981 (ineffective)**

**Compulsion to mistrust Slytherin house: administered via enchanted parchment, 24 July, 1991 (ineffective)**

**Compulsion to hate Severus Tobias Snape: administered via enchanted parchment, 24 July, 1991 (ineffective)**

**Magical Blocks:**

**Magical core blocked by 60%: by Albus Dumbledore (100% broken)**

**Intelligence blocked by 30%: by Albus Dumbledore (100% broken)**

**Natural Abilities:**

**Necromancy**

**Animagus Transformation**

**ETC:**

**Unknown Creature inheritance, awakens on 13th birthday**

**Soul Bond: unknown other half, fully in effect on 13th birthday**

Harry was unsurprised by most of the things on the parchment, the Master of Death title made him chuckle, Athimus probably put that in somehow. It was unsurprising that there was no vault for Slytherin and Gaunt, the Gaunt family had been piss poor after all, and as descendants of Slytherin they had used up that vault a long time ago. Heir Riddle was thrown in there was well, which made Tom grumble, but was also unsurprising. Seeing **(ineffective)** down the list of compulsions was a wonderful thing, and he didn't see anything too shocking about the blocks and natural abilities. He’d been practicing necromancy since he was 7 after all, and his dad was an animagus. The unknown creature inheritance made him stop though, _definitely Fate’s doing, I’m sure._

The soul bond also made him, and apparently Tom, pause.

 _Soul bonds are dangerous for monsters like us, Leech,_ Tom spoke quietly, _you'll get very possessive very quickly._

_Let's put that on the backburner for now, snake face._

Handing the parchment to Griphook to look over, Harry started thinking about what he needed to do with the knowledge he now had. 

_I guess Slytherin is out._

_I beg your pardon?_

_Let's be realistic, Tom, me in Slytherin is going to get a lot of negative attention, and I'm supposed to mistrust the house, right?_

_Idiot boy, you're Slytherin to your bones, the hat wouldn't let you go anywhere else._

_You mean you'll throw the hissy fit of the century if I don’t go to your old house?_

_You're going to Slytherin and that's final._

“Heir Potter, it appears that you have a rather peculiar title,” he pointed to the line: **Master of Death (by abnormal, once in an eternity circumstances) Votes on Wizengamot: N/A,** and sent Harry a confused look.

 _Ah._ “Its a personal matter that doesn't really need to be discussed.”

_Excellent Bullshitting, leech._

Griphook, deciding that whatever was going on was absolutely above his pay grade, moved on, “Heir Potter, you have several heir rings you can take up today, though I am sorry to say that Gringotts doesn't hold muggle heirship/lordship rings, and the Gaunt/Slytherin lordship ring currently needs to be recalled.”

 _Well that makes things easier, eh snake face?_ “That's fine, which rings can I take today?”

Griphook looked at some files before answering, “the Slytherin and Gaunt rings are one in the same, and while the lordship ring needs to be recalled the heirship one does not, you can also take on the Potter heirship. You'll have to wait for the current heir Black to either die or pass his title onto you, and considering he is currently rotting in Azkaban, the likelihood of the latter is next to nothing.”

_Pity, I wonder if I should bother helping Sirius? There doesn't seem to be much of a point to it now… eh, I'll leave it up to Fate._

“Thank you Griphook.”

The goblin grunted, before handing him two ring boxes, opening the first one, he found the Potter ring, which was a gold band with a medium sized ruby as the focal point, with smaller ones branching off on either side in an infinity shape. It was intricate, with knots of gold making elaborate patterns along the band. He put it on his right ring finger, and it shrunk to fit. Opening the second box, he found a simple silver band that, on closer inspection, had small carvings of snakes weaving along it. He put it on his right pointer finger, and it also shrunk to fit. 

“I would like to take 1,000 galleons from my trust vault.” he finally said, still admiring his new rings.

“You still do not have your key.” the goblin replied

“Well can I have one made and the other one recalled or something?” 

_Oh yes, because that's a perfect way of staying off Dumbledore’s radar._

_I need money snake face._

“Yes, we can have that done.” Bringing a plain silver key out from a cabinet, he handed the dagger to Harry again with the instruction that it requires 5 drops of blood this time. After getting that sorted and the old key re-called, Harry was led down to the carts to get his money. Once he finally re entered the lobby, his aunt was nearly catatonic with worry. Grabbing his hand firmly, she all but sprinted out of the bank.

“Alright love where are we going first?”

“To get a trunk Auntie.”

Upon entering the store ‘Trunks for all occasions,’ an uncomfortably friendly salesman walked them over to some high end school trunks.

 _Get the basic four compartment one,_ Tom fell into lecturer mode, _that way you can have one for clothes, one for books, another for anything else, and the last to enchant into a studio apartment so you can quite literally live out of your trunk._ The idea was ingenious, and Tom obviously knew how to do the enchantments necessary, so Harry happily paid for a black dragon leather trunk with steel brackets, four compartments, and even paid a little extra to have his name embossed into the leather. Hadrian was a nice name, he was going to show it off.

After buying the trunk he gave his aunt some money to go get a coffee at Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlour and relax, while he got his books and stationary. After spending far too much on fancy quills, inkwells, and parchment in the stationary store Scribbulus Writing Instruments, he waltzed over to Flourish and Blotts for books. Browsing the shelves after getting the first-year book bundle, Harry lazily listened to Tom whisper book recommendations in his ear.

_That one is an excellent resource for transfiguration, grab it. Oh, and that red one on the fourth shelf delves deeper into potion ingredient preparation than the required book does, grab it as well. Turn the corner, I remember the history of magic section always being stocked with a small but delightful encyclopedia of history books at Hogwarts, it’s self updating. There! The little black book on the bottom shelf._

And so on.

Once Harry (and more importantly, Tom) felt that he was adequately prepared for the school year, he went to pay for all his books. Leaving Flourish and Blotts, Harry decided to do a very sneaky thing and waltzed into Twilfitt and Tatting’s for some high quality robes.

_I don't have any robes, and if you're really so convinced that I'm going to be in Slytherin, you should help me get a wardrobe that the purebloods will accept._

Tom begrudgingly agreed, and after getting fitted, talked him through a catalogue of men's robes. They decided on 4 slacks, in black, dark brown, beige, and deep green. 5 silk shirts that Harry felt were uncomfortably similar to the ones that Death: man-whore extraordinaire wore on the daily, but Tom was adamant, these ones were in various shades of black and green. He got warm socks and some _very_ nice dragon leather combat boots, as well as some dress shoes of a similar material. He got several robes, all in deep greens and purples, and convinced Tom that he should get one last one in a very deep, almost maroon red. He got two scarves, one all black and one in deep blue. A long, warm winter cloak that was all black, with gold trim, and two pairs of gloves. Feeling satisfied with his purchases, he had a quick jaunt over to Madam Malkins, where he got fitted (again), but this time for school robes. Standing on the platform, Harry listened, detached, as the door opened and shut, and a familiar head of blonde hair took up this peripheral vision.

_Malfoy?_

Harry looked to his right, sure enough, the prince of Slytherin himself stood on the adjacent platform. Harry suddenly got a flash of fire, and a scared boy clinging to him on a broom, flying out of the room of requirement. 

_Could you lay off with the psychological torture Tom? We both know it never works._

Malfoy glanced over to him, “ello there, are you off to Hogwarts too?”

_Bloody hell he sounds young_

“Yea, I'm a first year, name’s Harry Potter, how goes?”

Malfoy glanced up at his forehead, questioning, “Oh! I'm wearing a… uh…. glamour over it.”

He seemed to accept this answer, and help out his hand, “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy. Pleased to meet you.”

Harry met his hand, and felt prickles race from his fingers up his arm. He could sense that Tom was paying attention. _Hmmm... how strange._

Deciding to ignore whatever Tom had going on, knowing it was likely plotting-world-domination related, Harry chatted with Malfoy for the rest of the fitting, oddly enough, the blonde didn't bring up Harry’s heirships or the boy-who-lived title.

Once he was done getting fitted and received his new school robes, Harry bid Malfoy goodbye. After putting all his new clothes away in his equally new trunk, he meandered over to the ice cream parlor to pick up his aunt. She seemed much calmer now and was able to trail behind him as he bought a cauldron, crystal phials, a collapsible telescope, and a set of brass scales. 

“All we have left is my wand auntie.” Harry crossed brass scales of the list and thought, looking up at her, “do you want to wait outside? I overheard from some other kids say that Olivander is really weird, and sometimes the wands try to blow up the shop.”

Petunia suddenly looked rather white, and settled down on a bench outside the wand shop, “I'll just stay here till you're finished love.”

Entering the store, Harry rang the bell with trepidation.

_You realize I might have to kill him if he somehow realizes you're in my head._

_I'll applaud your ability to think quickly if you manage it._

_Very helpful, thank you Tom._

“Harry Potter… yes I was wondering when I would be seeing you.” Ollivander was just as creepy as ever, and proceeded to give the same speech he did during Harry’s first life, though Harry was noticeably less interested in it.

“I see you've covered up your scar, very clever. I'm afraid to say I sold the wand that did it.”

_Blah Blah Blah, I'm an evil murderer, yes we know. Get on with it you great lump._

Harry was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Which arm is your wand arm?” Harry raised his right. The tape measure went tits up and started measuring everything under the sun, and some things covered from the sun by several layers of clothing, Harry blushed.

“Hmm... let's try this one, maple, springy, with a dragon heartstring core.”

And so it went, Harry trying wand after wand with no luck, and Ollivander getting closer and closer to his emotional orgasm. Finally, he pulled out the holly and phoenix feather wand. Excited, Harry grabbed it, only to feel… nothing. Literally _nothing_. 

Tom was _cackling._

“Oh no that won't do, hmmm.”

Ollivander tottered off to find another wand, as if it was no big deal that Harry's wand didn't _bloody work!_

“Death, this is your fault isn't it.”

A screech and a bang, a flash of light and the death god himself sat on the counter, looking very pleased. Not for the first time did Harry want to slap that smug smile off the bastard's face.

“How's it going?”

“Eat a dick, you piece of shite. What the bloody budgering fuck happened to my wand?”

Death casually grabbed the cigarette box from his pocket and lit one, unsurprisingly. What was surprising, was when he reached back in again and pulled out the elder wand.

“It's the only wand that'll work for you, hate to say it. If you're worried about Dumbledore recognizing it, don't be.” he put it on the counter and vanished, like an absolute _tool._

Harry didn't even bother waiting around for Ollivander to come back, he grabbed the elder wand, and after feeling it heat up and pulse in his hands, ran out of the store.

* * *

Petunia was on her last leg, but Harry was hungry, so they went back to the ice cream parlor and got him some plain vanilla to hold him over. Looking out of the window, Harry suddenly caught sight of a gaggle of redheads coming out of the second hand robe shop. Glairing, Harry observed as the twin terrors themselves bouncing around the perimeter of the group, being nuisances. Harry reflected on an old conversation.

_Two years previous…_

_“Not all of the Weasleys were being paid off to control you, the older three brothers were mostly out of school and Dumbledore didn't really care about them.” Death had visited to observe Harry's necromancy progress, and eventually started revealing all his potential betrayers, “those twins though… well, Chaos really loves them. So, being a menace herself, she gifted them with an urge to be absolutely neutral...chaotic neutral, that is.”_

_“Meaning they don't care who you are, as long as they can prank you.” Harry surmised, leaning his cheek on his hand as he contemplated the potential behind an alliance with them._

_“Yep, those twins live only to cause problems. If you want to trust any of the Weasleys, trust them.”_

Present day…

Harry did, in fact, decide to trust the twins. Though he wasn't going to touch them with a ten foot pole until they were away from the other Weasleys. Leaning forward in his chair, Harry quickly finished his ice cream.

_Once we get home, I need to read all the course books and store them in my mindscape, with you help with the organization?_

He could hear Tom sigh, _I might as well, I doubt you'll be able to organize in a coherent manner without me._

_Bastard._

_Leech._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is off to Hogwarts! I'm so excited about writing the Hogwarts years, mostly because of how different it will all be since Tom is vibing in Harry's skull plotting world domination instead of in Quirrell's head.... plotting... world domination............ ANYWAY its going to be fun


	8. Off To Hogwarts pt.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter is 100% prepared for departure on the Hogwarts express, and quite ready to settle into a warm bed in his desired house: Hufflepuff. Tom Riddle, however, is fully against Harry's house of choice, and other forces at play might very well agree with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beginning of Year One: On Unsteady Feet

**Year One: On Unsteady Feet**

Harry Potter strolled the halls of Hogwarts, glancing up at the moving paintings, he smiled at the people inside of them. Reaching the library, he walked up to a shelf labeled **Defense Against the Dark Arts.** Taking a book out of the bag slung over his shoulder, he placed it in an empty space.

“Is that the last one?” 

“I think so.”

Harry Potter and Tom Riddle stood in his mind, they had been sorting through his new knowledge for the past few hours. The process involved a lot of walking though, apparently it was a metaphor for processing information, which made some sort of sense. He enjoyed walking through the halls, though considering that in a few hours he would be on the Hogwarts express headed towards the real deal, it felt a little redundant.

Harry closed his eyes in his mindscape, opening them again in the real world. _Time to get ready_.

He hummed a happy tune while he buttoned up his shirt, throwing a beige jumper over it. Looking at himself in the mirror, he grinned. 

Harry Potter was quite tall for his age, standing at 5’3. He was obviously muggle-raised, just going off of the tan pants and sneakers, but the lightning bolt scar branching out from his hairline down to the tip of his nose told a different story.

“You ready for Pigpimples, Harry?” Dudley had thought the name Hogwarts was far too ridiculous to _not_ make fun of.

“Pimples are different from warts Dudders.”

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

So on and so forth.

Eventually the boys were called down by Vernon. Grabbing his trunk, Harry raced down the stairs, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get to the car. He liked the Durselys now sure, but there was no place like home.

Everyone piled in the car, and after a short drive, Harry was being hugged by a teary eyed Petunia.

“Do you remember how to get through to the platform, love?”

“Yes aunt Petunia.”

“Good good, we’ll see you at Christmas, dear.”

Harry waved goodbye to the Dursleys, and once he was far enough away, shifted his shirt and peered down the collar. 

_“~Hey Thasin, you ok in there?~”_ He questioned the brightly colored snake wrapped loosely around his middle.

“ _~I am well Harry, are we going to the castle of many mice?~_ ” Harry rolled his eyes, Thasin had adamantly refused to go to Hogwarts till Harry explained that it was full of mice, she had warmed up to the idea quickly after that.

“ _~Yes, we are, stay quiet in there ok? I don't feel like explaining to anyone why I have a snake on me.~_ ”

Harry walked briskly towards the wall between platforms nine and ten. Not pausing in the slightest, he walked right through the wall into platform 9 ¾.

_It's good to be back._

Not wanting to dally and risk get caught by the Weasleys, Harry made his way through the crowds onto the bright red steam engine. Walking towards the back of the train, Harry searched for an empty compartment. 

_The last one on the left was my compartment, go there._

Deciding to humor him, Harry followed Tom's instructions. Looking into the compartment and finding it empty, Harry went in, setting his trunk down onto the floor and locking the door, he shut the curtains for privacy.

_Ready Tommy?_

_Just do it, Leech._

Harry closed his eyes and centered himself, they had gotten a lot better at switching after so many years of practice. Reaching out with his magic, he felt Tom grab hold and pull himself to the surface.

Opening his eyes, Tom got to work. Replenishing the notice-me-not wards he had placed long ago, he got on his knees to start enchanting the fourth compartment of Harry’s trunk. They hadn't been able to do this at the Dursleys because of the trace, but being on the train made it more difficult for the ministry to figure out who was casting the spells.

That was how Tom spent the first several hours of the train ride, enchanting a compartment of a trunk to be bigger was easy, sure, but then he had to alter the walls and transfigure furniture, a kitchenette, and other accessories. It wouldn't have taken as long if the furniture was a normal transfiguration, meaning it would eventually go back to its original shape, but Tom didn't want to bother finding real furniture, and put in the extra effort (and magic) to make the transfigurations permanent. He could distantly feel the train start to move at one point, but other than that kept his attention on the elaborate web of enchantments he was weaving. 

Three hours into the trip, he sat back and sighed, letting Harry take back over.

_I've exhausted my reserves, wake me up when we get to Hogwarts._

It was interesting to Harry how Tom still had his own magical core. Whenever they shifted, their magical core shifted as well. Tom had credited it to one's soul being interconnected with their core, which made some sort of sense. Giving credence to this idea was Tom's core, which was way less than half the size of Harry’s (whose core was already quite large and still growing), and looked like it had several bites taken out of it. Harry had though that Toms magic would have diminished as he made more horcruxes by the same logic, but apparently the main soul, being the one with its own personal body, could easily draw on the magic placed in its horcruxes. Since Tom himself was now a horcrux, he was stuck with the amount of magic he had on hand. This made Tom’s magic reserves quite shallow, and by extension the amount of magic he could use at a time was also quite low in comparison to what he was able to do at his prime. That amount was still quite high mind you, proof that Tom had been obnoxiously powerful at one point in time, rivaling Harry and even Dumbledore.

After putting his newly enchanted trunk on the overhead, Harry settled down on the plush seat and fell into a meditative state.

Opening his eyes in the great hall, he made his way down to the chamber of secrets, passing paintings of memories on the way there, Harry reflected on his first time getting sorted.

Stopping at a painting frame, the paint inside swirled, before clearing to show the memory. Harry looked at himself, the smallest boy in the year, practically trembling on the stool. 

He had never been brave. 

In his first life he showed up to Hogwarts desperate to prove himself, a boney little boy that wished that he was brave, that he was strong. 

The hat shouted out Gryffindor. 

Harry could admit now that what he had really been asking for was stability... acceptance. Slytherin would have tested him yes, but the first Harry Potter was Dumbledore's pawn before he even stepped foot into Hogwarts, if he had gone off the predestined path, he wouldn't have survived his first year, simple as that. 

_Never again._

Harry wasn't going to be brave anymore, he wasn't going to be a pawn. He was going to be a monster. Monsters aren't a part of the game, they aren't forced to play either. Monsters chew up the game pieces and spit them out in the players faces.

He turned from the memory right as the hat shouted ‘Gryffindor!’, and started back on the path to the Chamber of Secrets. Tom was asleep, he wouldn't notice a few books missing if Harry put them back before he woke.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes on the Hogwarts express, looking out the window, he noticed that it was dark out and the train was starting to slow down. Getting up, he grabbed his school robes out of the clothing compartment of his trunk and started to get dressed.

Peering out the door, he glanced around before hissing to Thasin to stay as still as possible. Walking down with the other students, he slunk through the crowd towards Hagrid.

“Firs’ years! Firs’ years o’er here!”

He managed to keep his head down and go unnoticed by the half giant. Hagrid meant well, but he was Dumbledore’s man through and through.

Sitting down in a boat with three other people, he observed who he thought might be Neville Longbottom across from him. Neville had grown a lot over the years, and his 11 year old self was almost unrecognizable in comparison to him at 17.

“Hi there.”

“Oh! Uh.. hi.” Neville also had gotten a whole lot braver over the years, mostly through constant teasing and self loathing.

“What house do you want to get into?” Harry never thought Gryffindor suited Neville, the boy would be much happier in Hufflepuff.

“Uh… my gran wants me to be in Gryffindor like my parents, I don't know if I'll make it though.”

“Sure, of course... but what about what you want?”

“Huh?”

Harry made a conservative effort to not roll his eyes, “what house do _you_ want to be in?”

Neville seemed to be thinking very hard about that, Harry left him to it. 

Turning to the other two people in the boat, he got a good look at a very young Hannah Abbott next to Neville, and Susan Bones across from her.

_I don't like all the Hufflepuffs you’ve surrounded yourself with, Leech._

_Why? Afraid they'll tempt me to the house of badgers?_

A sharp pain through his scar was the only reply.

He considered talking to the two girls, but thought better of it, Suzan Bones’ aunt was a formidable woman, and a good potential ally, but he was trying to fly under Dumbledore’s radar. Making allies too soon would make the old goat suspicious, best to focus on learning as much magic as possible for now. Tom’s voice broke him out of his thoughts.

_There it is._

Harry stared at the castle longingly. More magic sensitive than he was in his last life, he could practically taste Hogwarts’ distinct aura in the air. Harry felt like he was coming home.

As the boats came gently to shore, the first years stumbled out one at a time, and started to make their way up the path. Hagrid pounded on the large wooden door, and led them into the castle proper.

Going up several flights of stairs, the group met Professor McGonagall, who then had a quiet conversation with Hagrid. All Harry could pick up was a few muffled sentences.

_“I didn’t see ‘im Pro’fessor, but he might ‘ave slipped past.”_

_“That's fine Hagrid, I'll take a closer look.”_

The professor not so subtly searched the crowd for him. He entertained the idea of hiding, but decided against it. He could tell the moment her eyes locked onto his scar that the wheels in her head started turning. He could admit that he didn't look much like his father anymore, his face shape was different, with a stronger jaw. It was probably Death's fault, making Harry look more like him was _absolutely_ something that bastard would do, but it wasn't a bad look, so… whatever.

McGonagall led them into a side chamber and told them to smarten up. Once she left whispers broke out among the first years, and he could hear Hermione mumbling spells under her breath from across the room.

“Oi! Are you Harry Potter?”

With Tom cackling in his head, Harry turned to his left to see Ronald Weasley staring at him. Taking a moment to reflect fondly on his life 20 seconds prior, Harry nodded affirmative and decided to play mute.

_The cowards way out._

_Oh? Would you prefer I strike up a civil conversation?_

_It doesn't seem like you get a choice in the matter._

“Wicked! My name is Ron. Ron Weasley-” thus began the most painful thirty seconds of Harry's young life. Ronald talked his ear off about everything under the sun, “-Quidditch is the best, I know you grew up with muggles and all that, but i'd be happy to show you how to play-” so it seemed Dumbledore told the Weasleys about his family. Sad, but unsurprising, “I'm gonna be in Gryffindor, its the best house, Ravenclaw is alright, but its full of a bunch of nerds, Hufflepuff-” Harry was getting uncomfortably close to committing his first murder when Draco Malfoy, always the reliable one, decided to butt into the conversation and stir the pot.

“Oh shut up Wesley, you'll be lucky if even Hufflepuff accepted you.”

“Sod off, Malfoy! You're one to talk, being a shoe-in for Slytherin.”

Harry stood passively while the two argued, wondering if this moment was indicative of the rest of his life. The light and dark fighting over him in a constant, never ending tug-of-war.

_Stop being so dramatic._

At some point a few ghosts breezed through a wall, right on time. What was different from the first go round however, is they took one look at him and hightailed it out of there.

_Weird._

Right on time, McGonagall reentered the room and led them out into the great hall. Malfoy, seemingly having won whatever posturing battle he and Ronald had fought, was on his left, following along like a lost puppy.

“The ceilings enchanted, I read about it in Hogwarts: A History,” and there went Hermione Granger, ever the walking encyclopedia. 

Malfoy leaned up, whispering in his ear, “Hey, Pottah. What house do you want to be in?”

“I'm not sure, whichever’s best for me, I s’pose,” he whispered back, finding himself enjoying the blonde much more this time than he had in his last life.

“Well, I hope you're in Slytherin with me. I've heard the common room is brilliant.” They stopped in a group at the front of the hall, waiting patiently as McGonagall brought over the hat and stool, setting the hat gently on the seat. One of the seams ripped open and the hat started to sing...

**"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,**

**But don't judge on what you see,**

**I'll eat myself if you can find**

**A smarter hat than me.**

**You can keep your bowlers black,**

**Your top hats sleek and tall,**

**For I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat**

**And I can cap them all.**

**There’s nothing hidden in your head**

**The Sorting Hat can’t see,**

**So try me on and I will tell you**

**Where you ought to be.**

**You might belong in Gryffindor,**

**Where dwell the brave at heart**

**Their daring, nerve and chivalry,**

**Set Gryffindors apart;**

**You might belong in Hufflepuff**

**Where they are just and loyal,**

**Those patient Hufflepuffs are true,**

**And unafraid of toil;**

**Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,**

**If you've a ready mind,**

**Where those of wit and learning,**

**Will always find their kind;**

**Or perhaps in Slytherin,**

**You'll make your real friends,**

**Those cunning folk use any means,**

**To achieve their ends.**

**So put me on! Don't be afraid!**

**And don't get in a flap!**

**You're in safe hands (though I have none)**

**For I'm a Thinking Cap!”**

A round of applause from all four houses as the first years looked on in trepidation. McGonagall stepped forward with a long roll of parchment.

“When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” she explained, “Abbott, Hannah!”

“Hufflepuff!”

_She seems like a sweet girl._

“Bones, Susan!”

“Hufflepuff!”

_It would be smart to get on her good side._

Harry could feel Tom prowling around his mind, hissing promises of pain and suffering if he dared follow them to Hufflepuff.

“Boot, Terry!”

“Ravenclaw!”

She continued down the line for a ways, eventually calling out,

“Granger, Hermione!”

This was the first to take a while, and it was obvious that Hermione was attempting to argue with the hat. Eventually, a very disgruntled hat yelled out for Gryffindor, and she ran off to the respective table. Harry noticed Dumbledore smile happily.

“Hopkins, Wayne!”

“Hufflepuff!”

And so it continued, once the list rounded on ‘Longbottom, Neville’ the pudgy boy nervously walked up to the stool, and after a brief moment the hat called ‘Hufflepuff!’

_Good for him._

“MacDougal, Morag!”

“Ravenclaw!”

“Malfoy, Draco!”

“Wish me luck?” Malfoy asked him, cheekily.

“Get up there already.” he replied instead. Malfoy seemed to take it in stride though, and the hat, once again, barely needed to touch his head before it was shouting out ‘Slytherin!’.

 _I was like that._ Tom seemed to have found a kindred spirit.

_Of course you were._

As they neared the P’s, excited whispers started to break out among the crowd behind them.

“Potter, Harry!”

He climbed the steps and sat firmly on the stool, the hat obscuring his view of the curious faces as it plopped down on his head.

 _“Hufflepuff, if you please.”_ _“Slytherin. Now. “_

_Well! Isn't this fascinating. Mr. Potter, however did you end up with the dark lord in your head…? Ah! That's how. Hmmm… I see, I see, what an interesting life you've lived, Master of Death hmmm?”_

Harry didn't have the patience for enchanted hats today, “ _Hufflepuff. Now. Chop chop.”_

The hat laughed humorously while Tom raged in his mindscape, Harry was 96% sure he heard a chair breaking.

_Now now Mr. Riddle don't you worry, there's no conceivable way I could place Mr. Potter in Hufflepuff._

_Well why the hell not?_

The hat tutted at him, _dear Mr. Potter, you are quite hard working yes, but only to achieve your own ends. That is not to mention your loyalty, which is non-existent. I'm afraid to say that if I went against all I stood for to place you there, the castle would be up in flames within the week._

Harry supposed that was fair.

_That being said, I quite agree with Mr. Riddle, Slytherin suits you even more in this life than it did in your last._

The smugness radiating from Tom was infuriating.

_Mr. Hat, I am trying very hard to fly under the radar, would you at the very least consider Ravenclaw?_

The hat tutted again, _you are indeed quite witty Mr. Potter, but no, I'm afraid I have to decline your request for the house of Ravens as well._

 _Why??_ Harry was getting increasingly agitated, Slytherin was the last place Dumbledore wanted him, and a Harry wearing a green tie was a Harry that knew no peace from the man.

 _Mr. Potter, you cannot go to Gryffindor because you are not truly brave, not anymore, you've figured that for yourself. You can not go to Hufflepuff because you are loyal to no one and never will be, and you are_ **_certainly_ ** _not kind. You cannot go to Ravenclaw because your intelligence is a means to an end, used as a sword against your foes, you pursue it for power, nothing more. You must go to Slytherin, dear boy, because you embody the house to the letter. Ambition drums in your ears child, you wish to topple an empire! Not only that, but you drip cunning to the floor like blood, sneaking around right under the Headmaster's nose. You are resourceful, determined, and refuse to be used. Utterly self reliant. Yes I'm afraid that any trait you have that may lend you to one of the other houses is a byproduct of your Slytherin characteristics. It is the only place for you._

Tom was never going to let him live this down.

_Fine, but if Dumbledore catches on to the plot because of this, I'm going to tear you apart seam by bloody seam._

“Slytherin!”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? Is that... No! A cliff hanger! I did say I would get the sorting out today, but I have a lot of homework, and doubt my ability to finish the entire chapter in the allotted time without cutting corners. Don't worry, if I end up having enough time ill post the pt. 2 today as well, but at the moment I expect it to be out tomorrow morning!


	9. Off to Hogwarts pt.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's start in the house of snakes is better than anticipated, all things considered. His budding friendship with one Draco Malfoy likely has something to do with it.  
> As children settle in for the night, an old man reassesses some plans, and a transfiguration professor worries over some unforeseen changes.

**Previously:**

**_Yes I'm afraid that any trait you have that may lend you to one of the other houses is a byproduct of your slytherin characteristics. It is the only place for you._ **

**Tom was never going to let him live this down.**

**_Fine, but if Dumbledore catches on to the plot because of this, I'm going to tear you apart seam by bloody seam._ **

**“Slytherin!”**

The Slytherins in attendance appeared very flummoxed, Ravenclaw was curious, and Hufflepuff felt strangely relieved. There was some angry muttering from Gryffindor, Ron Weasley had gone stark white, and Harry could feel Dumbledore’s gaze burning a hole in his back.

So everything was just peachy.

Getting up, Harry could hear the distinct sound of Tom popping open a bottle of champagne.

_Yea yea laugh it up, you ponce. How did you even get food in my head?_

Handing the hat back to McGonagall, who was impressively unfazed, all things considered, he meandered over to a _very_ happy Draco sitting at the Slytherin table. Plopping down, Harry continued to watch the sorting. There weren't any more surprises after that, fortunately, as still pale Ronald Weasley was sorted into Gryffindor, and the sorting wrapped up with Blaise Zabini for Slytherin.

After the hat had been sent back to the headmasters office for another year, Dumbledore got up to say his most anticipated speech. Harry wasn't paying attention to him though, too focused on a group of older Slytherins farther down the table, who were watching him in thinly-veiled hatred.

_It'll be hilarious when they find out just where their darling dark lord ended up._

_Don't antagonize my followers, leech._

_Why not? That's all you've ever done._

_Touché_ _._

Harry didn't actually feel like terrorizing anybody, at least not for a while. He had a good foundation in Slytherin, somehow befriending Draco Malfoy of all people assured him of that. If the going got tough he could always flash the Slytherin heir ring and get people to back off, only if things got really nasty though. Looking away and focusing on Dumbledore in time to hear the foreboding warning about the third corridor, Harry rolled his eyes.

_Wanna go steal it?_

_From what your memories show, it would be impossible to even get our hands on. That blasted mirror would foil any plan we could come up with._

_Not if I don't plan on using it._

_Pardon?_

The appearance of food cut the conversation short. Piling a variety of foods on his plate, Harry tucked in, with impeccable table manners, as aunt Petunia insists.

The table was tense, and looking down, Harry could see the older years were now having hushed conversations and pointing down the table. He turned back to his food.

Draco was talking loudly to Theodore Nott, who looked much less enthusiastic about the conversation, and kept trying to inch away from the blonde. Finding all the conversions in his vicinity boring, Harry turned inward, and resumed his chat with Tom.

 _Well I don't want to use it, not in the traditional sense._ He took a bite of broccoli, _I want to use it as leverage to get a useful ally._

_That ally being?_

_Nicolas Flamel, of course._

“Well Potter, color me impressed. I didn't think it was possible for the hat to be tricked.”

Harry looked up, extremely **un** impressed by the insult, to find Pansy Parkinson glaring down her pug nose at him.

“Are you complimenting me for doing something never seen before, or trying to insinuate that I don't belong in Slytherin? It's awfully difficult to tell.”

Draco snickered next to him, and all the other first years relaxed a tad, Potter wasn't at all what they had been expecting, but he sure sounded Slytherin to them. 

Parkinson however, wasn't convinced, “Well of course you don't belong here!”

“Give me one good reason why not.” Conversation stopped, politics was a slippery slope in Slytherin, and considering that the first years had two half-bloods, things could get nasty quickly. Suddenly wondering what human blood tasted like, harry had the inexplicable urge to tear Parkinson limb from limb, his eyes narrowed.

_Watch yourself, Leech. You don't want to show your hand too soon._

Luckily, he didn't have too, Draco, apparently feeling affronted that his new friend was getting singled out, turned against Parkinson, “Pansy, Harry is an heir of higher standing than you, hold your tongue.”

Parkinson went beet read, and turned very quickly back to her dinner. All the other first years let out a sigh of relief, the look in Potter’s eye had been dangerous.

* * *

The rest of dinner passed without incident, and they were soon being sent off to their common rooms. Harry had been in a _mood_ since the Parkinson incident, as he had now dubbed it, and was sulking along after Draco, who was still trying to get Nott roped into conversation, and failing quite spectacularly.

Feeling eyes on him, Harry looked up to see the 5th year prefect, Gemma Farley, looking at him with a warm smile.

_Oh no you don't._

Harry was NOT about to go acting like a sweet innocent little angel for this girl, Petunia made him do it at dinner parties often enough that he couldn't physically stomach any more older women cooing at him, especially not at bloody Hogwarts, thank-you-VERY-much.

_Play nice, Leech._

_Eat my ass, Riddle._

Ignoring Tom as he went off on another of his rants, Harry zoned in on Farley again who had doubled back, nearing him at a rapid pace. _Remember Harry, sweet as sugar._ Swallowing his pride, Harry gave her the most angelic smile he could muster. 

She physically cooed at him.

_Disgusting._

“Hello there... you're Harry Potter right?” she simpered, in a sugary sweet voice. He nodded, mentally kicking Tom in the shin, “be sure to tell me if anyone gives you trouble, alright sweetheart?” 

Swallowing the rising bile, he replied with a quiet, “thank you ma'am, I will ma’am.” Which made her coo at him again, before she flounced back up to the front of the pack.

Repressing the urge to kill himself on principle, Harry turned back to Draco, to find that the blonde had been watching the entire bloody thing.

_Tom, can you make me have a seizure or something? I think I need to start my life over again, I'm sure Death would be willing to send me back a third time._

_Live with the consequences of your actions._

“You didn't see that.” Draco gave him a devilish smirk.

“Really?” he drawled, “because it looked an awful lot like you were kissing up to Farley to get in with the upper years to me.”

“Oh so that's what you saw?” Harry shot back, his voice ice, “because I'm quite sure she was the one kissing up to me. Or have you forgotten who you're talking to?”

Draco didn't have much to say to that, and after some indignant sputtering, _ok really Tom he even ACTS like you,_ he turned back to Nott, who tensed up and started edging away again.

Crisis averted and new ally sufficiently cowed, Harry turned forward just in time, as the prefects had started to explain how to get into the common room.

“It's quite simple really.” the male prefect that harry had never bothered to learn the name of said, “The password this week is newt, it changes every fortnight.”

As he said the word ‘newt’ the stone wall behind him slowly opened inward, revealing the common room.

“Alright you lot, everyone in.” The first years shuffled into the room, taken by the surprisingly cozy interior. It was in the shape of a long rectangle, with the far wall being entirely made out of (hopefully) thick glass. All along the side walls were great, big fireplaces with cozy couches and long shag rugs, “to keep your feet warm during the winter,” explained Farley. There were curved stairs on either side of them, starting along the walls and curving up to connect in the middle, leading to a second flood above their heads that appeared to have more seating. Walking further in, Harry noticed that the paintings and banners along the walls were all snake themed, unsurprisingly.

Gemma turned to them with a dazzling smile, “welcome to Slytherin! For any of you who don't know, I'm Gemma Farley, and the grump next to me is Jacob dont-talk-to-me-while-I’m-reading Roiser!” the newly dubbed Jacob glared at her heatedly, she ignored him. “If you need any help settling in, be sure to come right to one of us, unless Jacob is reading, then you should probably steer clear.” 

Shaking his head, Rosier continued, “there are three rules to Slytherin, one: outside of these walls we are a house united, there will be no in-fighting where other houses can see. Second: we take care of our own, walk in groups if possible, and if you see another Slytherin in trouble, no matter who it is, you help them. And lastly-” he smirked, and Harry rolled his eyes, “never get caught.” Harry was starting to think that most Slytherins were huge fucking drama queens, Tom being a perfect example.

“Thank you Mr. Rosier... I can take it from here.” 

And him, definitely him.

_Is that...?_

_Hopefully._

Harry and the other Slytherin first years turned to see the bat of the dungeons himself: Severus Snape, gliding towards them like a menacing Dracula with daddy issues.

“Good evening. I am your head of house and potions professor. If you feel so inclined to discuss any matter that you believe goes beyond the capabilities of your prefects, then you will report it to me. Any acting up, pranks, loss of decorum or… bullying...” he glanced at Harry, “that I find out about will be reprimanded _heavily._ Mr. Potter, a word.”

The other first years were led up the stairs, Harry heard distantly that the boys dorm was along the western wall, but he was too excited for a sarcasm-heavy conversation to pay much attention. Harry walked purposefully over to the professor.

“Mr. Potter, I hope you are aware that any amount of fame you hold will be nil in this castle, you will be held to the same standard as all the other children.”

_Oh this is just too easy._

“Thank you sir,” he gave a shy smile, his dignity had already been obliterated not twenty minutes prior, might as well go all in, “I've been very overwhelmed with it all today. Aunt Petunia had me cover up my scar when we went school shopping, so I never realized how bad it was till I got on the platform.”

Snape had gone a very worrying shade of white when Harry had remarked that he lived with Lily Evans’ darling older sister, before progressively getting more and more red. Harry watched, fascinated, as the potions professor cycled through every color shade imaginable, settling on a pleasant green color that reminded him of vomit.

“Very good, Mr. Potter. That is all.” he swept from the room.

Snickering, Harry trotted up the stairs on his right, going up to the door labeled **Boys Dormitories**. He wandered down the hall for a ways till he found a door with his name, Draco’s, and Blase Zabini’s on it. Peering in, he found a square room with a large canopy bed on each wall. Observing further, he found that on the left hand side of each bed was a desk, and a large armoire on the right. The walls were the same colored stone as the rest of the castle, but the floor was completely covered with a deep green shag carpet similar to the ones out in the common room. Everything was in different shades of green and silver, much like the common room.

“What did Snape want?” Looking to the bed on his right, Harry noticed Zabini was currently lounging across it.

“Just wanted to ask how my aunt was, apparently they grew up together, same with my mum.”

He seemed to accept that answer, and pointed to the bed that was in front of Harry, “Draco took the bed across from me, so you can have that one.”

Shrugging, Harry walked forward, looking around for his trunk and finally finding it under his bed of all places, he flipped the third compartment open and started putting his clothes into the armoire. Distantly, he could hear Draco coming back in from wherever he had run off to, and flop onto his bed.

Finishing his task, he put his hand up his shirt and groped around for Thasin.

“Oi, Harry, what are you doing-OH SWEET MERLIN IS THAT A SNAKE?!”

Harry turned to Draco with an unimpressed look, holding a very hungry Thasin in his hand.

“No, you moron, she's obviously an owl.”

“ _~Harry I can smell mice! Let me hunt!~”_

He almost slipped into parseltongue but thought better of it. Setting her gently on the shag carpet, she darted quick as a viper out of the room, Draco screaming bloody murder all the while.

“Circe! you're in the house of snakes, Draco, get over it!” Zabini shot off, ignoring the fact that he had jumped up on his bed and was currently gripping the banister.

“Her name is Thasin, and her venom isn't deadly to anything but mice, so you can stop that now.”

Both boys sheepishly climbed down from their beds.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was very cross. Harry Potter's sorting was _extremely_ unfortunate. Sure, he had acknowledged the possibility that an abused child would develop traits that would lend them to the house of snakes, but he had hoped that young Ron Weasley would dissuade the boy from it. Though, it seemed that the youngest Weasley boy had failed in his assignment to find the Potter brat on the train, making his job that much harder.

_No matter, his house is hardly important, it is the people who he surrounds himself with that are paramount._

No, Dumbledore was not worried. Yes, it would certainly be more difficult to push the boy and his pawns together with them in different houses, but he was a resourceful man. Besides, the compulsions he weaved into the boy's Hogwarts letter assured that Harry would be very miserable in the house of snakes. Yes, a momentary setback is all, the boy would come running for a resort within the month, he was certain.

Dumbledore was pretending with great difficulty that he was not furious, he was pretending that when that wretched, evil little hat had yelled out slytherin, that he had not been heavily considering killing the child. No, Albus Dumbledore was perfectly fine with this new development, though he could admit that the next few months needed to be reconsidered. He sat down to plan out the next year.

* * *

Severus Snape was not a good man.

Many would consider him utter filth, in fact, but if Snape knew one thing, it was that Petunia Evans was one jealous bitch of a woman, and putting Lily’s son in her care was almost guaranteeing misery.

(Severus hadn't considered, of course, that Harry had been a rather cute baby, and with the blood wards free from negativity, Petunia was subconsciously forced to love the boy. Lily had been vicious like that.)

Stomping his way up the stairs to the headmasters office, Snape ran through several different scenarios that could come of this impromptu bitching match. Worse case scenario he was brushed off like a child. Best case? He lost his job.

Severus Snape was not a good man. He was a cruel, vindictive bastard, but he certainly hated his job, and that was something very admirable.

* * *

Up in the Headmasters office, a certain old man was plotting away. Feeling the proximity wards activate, he looked up from his papers in confusion. Searching for the wards, he narrowed in on Serverus Snape’s distinct magical signature, the man was agitated.

 _Wonderful!_ He smiled, it appeared that his beloved potions master was quite annoyed with the boys sorting as well.

Excited for the confrontation, Albus opened the door earlier than he usually did, Snape stomped in on a warpath.

“Ah, Severus my boy. What can I help you with?”

The aforementioned potions professor slammed the door shut and proceeded to bitch, as he often does. “ _Headmaster._ I would design to know why you would _ever_ place that boy in Petunias care. That woman _despises_ magic, I doubt the boy is being treated fairly.”

 _Oh dear._ It appeared that despite his best efforts, Severus was going to care if the boy was potentially abused or not, what a nuisance.

Settling down and bracing himself for a long night, Albus Dumbledore started on the arduous task of appeasing his pawn.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall sat in her quarters, milking a bottle of fine whiskey. She was overall quite happy about the nights sorting, everyone seemed oh so very pleased with where they ended up. Except... Harry Potter.

She had come and gone from the steps of #4 Privet Drive many times over the years, and always saw the boy in a state of happiness and ease. So when she had glanced at the Slytherin table and had seen _something else_ in his eyes... Well she felt quite worried is all, James had never looked at someone like that before... Like he wanted to devour them.

She took a sip of her whiskey.

His physical changes worried her as well, she had hardly recognized the boy. All his young life he had appeared to be a carbon copy of James Potter, albeit with a more sensible haircut, but when she caught sight of him for the first time in Hogwarts, he was completely unrecognizable. It made some sense, she reasoned, she hadn't gone to Privet drive at all in the past three years or so, assured the boy was doing just fine. Now though, she wished she had. Harry Potter had changed in a very subtle way. His face shape was different, he had higher cheekbones. His eye shape was different as well. 

Another sip.

It was more than that though, more than what was just on the surface. His gait had also altered, the boy walked like a predator, like he would reach out and wring your neck at any moment. 

There was something else behind those eyes.

When she met his eyes over the sea of other first years she had, for just a brief moment, felt that there was someone else that was also watching her, something old... deadly.

“There is something unnatural about that boy.”

Minerva McGonagall was wary, and just the smallest bit scared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Serverus Snape ever get over his daddy issues? Find out in the next episode (spoiler warning: no, he doesn't.)  
> Note: the next chapter will likely be out sometime this afternoon (I'm on central standard time for anyone who doesn't know). Todays my easy day in school so I have a lot of hours to fill with typing!


	10. First Year Character References

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be separating out the school year's with character references. These are the main four: Harry, Draco, Blaise and Theo. For those of you who don't know, I'm an artist before I am a writer, and a lot of people liked the idea of me separating the years with references for how I see the characters.

Here we are! I always say that Harry is tall as fuck, but I don't think I've ever just come out and said that he's a good head or so taller than Draco, lol. (Oh god my handwriting, I'm so sorry)

I added in quite a bit of personality traits, and my own general notes on the characters, because why not, and their specific heights, just so you can visualize all that a bit better. I also drew them biased on their personalities and general moods, which is why Harry is just kinda *there*, while Theo is trying to get away from Draco, who is.... like that. Blaise is just a laid-back kinda guy, but a trouble-maker, so I tried to emulate that with his pose as well. Hope you enjoy!

Ps. feel free to zoom in on the image to try and figure out what I was writing, if I hadn't written it myself I likely wouldn't really know.¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who are confused, this chapter was moved forward in the fic for proper sorting sake, so that people who are reading this after I posted the chapters get to see the sheet before they read first year.


	11. No One Can Fight Their Fate.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter has adapted to his placement in the house of snakes, and is quickly becoming friends with his two roommates. The first day of school proves difficult however, as Harry struggles to hide his superior abilities.  
> Dumbledore is making ripples in the water, and Tom is tying a noose.

Harry woke the morning of September 2nd to the sound of screaming. He smiled, and nestled deeper into his duvet. 

_It appears that Thasin had slithered into the young Malfoy’s bed sometime in the night._

_It certainly appears that way._

Harry didn't want to scare Draco, but there was something infinitely hilarious about the shorter boy's fear of snakes, considering which house he was in. 

_Immersion therapy will do him some good._ Harry reasoned, still listening to Draco’s screams. The previous night had been uneventful. After Thasin had left to go hunt, the other two boys rounded on him and demanded answers about her. Apparently, a colorful snake like Thasin wasn't all that common among wizards, even though they bred magical snakes quite often.

_“She's a California Garter snake, I found her in the garden. She probably escaped a zoo somewhere.”_

This prompted a conversation about magical zoos, and their difference from muggle ones. When the other two boys learned that he had been raised by his muggle relatives, they nearly fell over themselves offering to explain the nuances in the wizarding world to him. Which had to be stopped, immediately.

_“While I would usually accept the offer, I've grown up knowing about my heritage and visiting the wizarding world often.” a bit of a white lie, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them, “I've also got an excellent wizarding politics tutor, so I don't need to be caught up to speed.”_

The other boys were very impressed by this, for some reason, but decided that knowledge of him being muggle-raised should be kept under wraps in Slytherin.

_“You are heir Potter sure,” Blase said, gesturing to his heir ring, “but a lot of people will latch onto you living with muggles, and it will be difficult to be taken seriously by the older years if you campaign for prince.”_

Tom had explained the Slytherin hierarchy to him years ago, and the other boys felt assured in his knowledge on the subject. It went like this: the first three years had a prince and princess (the male and female leaders of the lower years) as well as their court. Fourth year and up had the king and queen respectively, who also had their own court. If the king and queen (or prince and princess) were not dating each other, then they would also have a consort, who was their unofficial second. There were advisors and such as well, but most of the titles besides the royals and consorts were usually made up on the fly, not being all that important in the general hierarchy. What was important, however, was the reason that Harry wanted the prince title in the first place: power. Something that interested Harry _very_ much. Tom had become prince in his second year and he became the most feared dark lord in recent history. If Harry played his cards right, tumbling Dumbledore off his throne was going to be much, _much_ easier if he gets his hands on the prince title first.

Back to the muggle-raised issue, Harry thought Blase had a good point, but didn't think there would be too many people arguing against his placement with muggles if he revealed himself as heir Slytherin. Not that he would do that anytime soon unless force. He wasn't an idiot, word would spread if he took the glamor off his Slytherin heir ring and started galivanting around with it in full view. Dumbledore was sure to hear about it and get alarmed, making his plans all the more difficult. No, Harry was going to keep that particular secret to himself for now, even sharing it with the other first years was risky, and Harry didn't _do_ risky.

The sound of Thasin’s indignant hisses broke him from his musings. Sighing, he sat up, watching Draco trying unsuccessfully to pry Thasin off of his arm with amusement.

 _“~Bird boy is warm. Harry! Tell the bird boy to stop.~”_ Not for the first time did Harry wonder about Thasin’s weird nicknames, which one of Draco’s characteristics lended him to being bird-like?

“Draco, she just wants to sleep on you, leave her be.”

“Sleep on me!?” Draco started pulling on Thasin harder. Rolling his eyes, Harry got out of bed and walked over to Draco’s languidly, stretching out and yawning. Petting down one of her colorful sides, he gently tugged Thasin off, she hissed her displeasure, but settled down. Walking back to his bed and placing her on the warm spot he had just vacated, he threw the covers over her. Turning back to Draco, he noted that the other boy didn’t appear all that comforted that the snake was now out of sight.

He sighed. _Oh well, immersion therapy takes tim_ e, “we should start getting ready, breakfast starts soon.”

He and Draco left the room with their robes, which now had green accents, slung over their arms. Heading to what Draco called ‘the barbaric communal bath’, Harry got a better look at the male dorm hall, which started with the seventh years and worked its way down, the first year dorms being the farthest from the door, at the end of the hall. Separating each year was a larger door labeled ‘baths’. So that each year group would get their own bathroom.

Finding the first year baths, Harry and Draco went inside. Looking around, Harry observed a long row of large shower stalls and toilets, and three doors that led to private baths big enough to fit five people, easily.

_Didn't Draco say it was a communal bath?_

_He grew up in a mansion, leech, this is as communal as it gets for him._

Stepping into one of the open shower stalls, Harry was pleased to note that there were assorted shampoos, conditioners, and fancily carved bar soaps. 

_Much nicer than the Gryffindor bathrooms._

After taking a very luxurious shower, he stepped out of the stall with his uniform on. Making his way to one of the large mirrors on the adjacent wall, he started lightly styling his hair. He had gotten better with it, working to his hair’s strengths instead of just trying to force it flat. The end result was stylishly messy, and barely covering his forehead, leaving his scar more visible than usual. This was purposeful though, Harry wanted to get the initial boy-who-lived madness out of the way, and leaving it all out in the open would help with that.

He had to wait another thirty minutes for Draco to finally finish styling his hair, and by that time the other first year boys had all meandered in to take showers as well. Blase had slunk in at some point with a wary look towards Draco, “He's got some lungs on ‘im” he muttered to Harry on his way past, forcing him to cover up his laugh with a cough.

Despite his original worry about being in Slytherin, Harry was feeling rather happy with the dorms, though his campaign for prince might be met with some difficulty.

_You hadn't even wanted to be in Slytherin and suddenly you're planning on taking control?_

_It's called adapting to your environment, Riddle, ever heard of it?_

_You're lucky Dumbledore doesn't know about Slytherin politics, or this would be a horrible idea._

Harry couldn't argue with that, the Slytherin hierarchy was an extremely well kept secret among the house, going back centuries but never brought up around anyone who wasn't a Slytherin. Tom had done research into the possibility of the subject being under some sort of secrecy ward, but hasn't found anything that confirms (or denies) the theory.

Walking out of the boys dorms with Draco and Blaise, Harry and his roommates made their way to the great hall for breakfast. Upon entering the hall, Harry noticed almost automatically that Dumbledore was absent from the head table. It was early, yes, but all the other teachers had arrived, and were occasionally glancing at the headmaster's chair, as if they expected him to just pop into existence at any moment.

Harry decided to keep a watch on the main doors for the headmaster or his many pawns, and settled down for a hearty breakfast with the other Slytherins.

* * *

Ronald Weasely was having a very bad morning. Slouching down further in his seat, he listened glumly to the headmaster chastise him for his failure. It wasn't his fault the boy-who-lived had hid somewhere on the train! Why was he being punished for putting the effort in?

“Now, my dear boy, I'm afraid that we have only two options. The first being that you integrate yourself into the boys friend group to keep an eye on him,” Ronald went green at the thought of having to play nice to a bunch of Slytherins, “or you can focus on convincing him to request a resort.”

He liked the second option much more, he had realized that Malfoy must have convinced Potter to go to Slytherin, there's no way the savior of the wizarding world could be a snake.

“I’ll convince him headmaster, don't worry.'' Ron was sure that this was his in, if he could be the best friend of the by-who-lived, no one could say that his brothers were better than him!

“Very good, my boy,” the headmaster smiled warmly, “now Miss. Granger, do you know your role as well?” He asked, turning to the bushy haired girl sitting primly in the seat next to the slouching Weasley boy.

“Yes headmaster, I am to integrate myself into his group, and study his movements. If I find anything worrying, I am to report it to you as soon as I am able.” Her words were short and fast, in the same tone she would use to answer a teacher’s question.

“Wonderful Miss. Granger! I have faith in the both of you, off you trot.” 

As the two were leaving, Dumbledore sat at his desk and watched happily. The children didn't fully understand why they were doing this. He had told them that the purpose of all this spying was to keep the boy safe, and to insure that he didn't walk the wrong path. Of course, the reality of the situation was much more nefarious than the two could ever anticipate, but no child would willingly take part in a decades long murder plot while knowing the outcome. Even Molly Weasley didn't know the full truth, believing the entire plan to be a plot to drag her family out of poverty, expecting the boy to live a long life with her daughter as his wife. Speaking of which, it had been awfully difficult to convince the goblins to misfile the fake marriage contract, but he didn't want it to be made public till he had the boy under love potions and happy to go along with it.

 _The burden I carry is immense, but in the end it must be done, fate decrees it._ He thought solemnly.

Fate, in fact, did not decree anything of the sort, and was quite pissed that he would think such a thing. More pissed with him than usual, in fact, and with an absurd amount of glee, she pulled out an inkwell and started writing. _Inspiration can come in many forms, I suppose anger is one of them._

* * *

Dumbledore did not, in fact, show up for breakfast, but his dear pawns Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum did, though they were quite late. Hermione Granger was not a very subtle person, and her constant looks his way made it quite obvious that they had been with the headmaster, plotting.

Harry didn't let it bother him though, he had bigger fish to fry than a couple annoying Gryffindors, though he did make a mental note to humor them. Who knows what Dumbledore told them to do, but it would no doubt come back to bite him if he was rude to their faces.

Taking his schedule from Snape with a ‘thank you, professor’, Harry and his two newest friends started to make their way to their first class: transfiguration with Gryffindor.

Blase’s mother was apparently quite adept in the subject, and on the way to the classroom he recited a few of her best methods, most of which Tom agreed were good shortcuts.

Stepping into the classroom, Harry’s eyes landed on McGonagall’s cat form lounging across the large desk at the front of the room. Harry could feel her eyes on him as he and his roommates settled down at the back of the class, on the Slytherin side.

_She suspects something of me?_

_Possibly, it may be best if you play down your abilities more than we planned, being above average can wait. Stick to mediocre abilities_

Harry agreed, and settled down to listen to Draco go on about his new broom or whatever… ok so harry wasn't actually paying attention, but he was studying the blonde, which counted for something, right?

_He doesn't look very bird-like to me, what do you think?_

_A snakes sense of smell picks up on the subtlest of scents, you would have no hope of understanding the complexities of-_

_Yea yea you like snakes I get it._

_Humph._

The bell finally rang, signaling the start of the period, McGonagall didn't transform though, waiting for one last person to show up. 

Ronald Weasley came sprinting into the class several minutes later, carrying with him his bag and a blueberry muffin. Looking to the front desk, he sighed with relief when he saw that McGonagall was not in attendance.

That relief turned to shock when she leapt off her desk and transformed back into her human form, looking quite cross.

“Mr. Weasley, if you cannot come to class on time, I might delegate to transfigure you into a watch, 5 points from Gryffindor,” she reprimanded him, pointing to an empty seat as if to say, ‘sit your ass down’.

All the Slytherins snickered quietly, excluding Harry, who was busy arguing with Tom and wasn't paying attention.

_Snakes are noble, majestic creatures!_

_They're literally just one long neck, Riddle. I can hardly call that majestic._

A sharp pain in his scar was the final word, apparently.

The professor had taken out her wand and was currently enchanting the chalk to write notes on the board. Taking out one of his new quills and some parchment, he started copying them down at Toms request. In his last life his study skills had been horrid, and while he was now quite experienced in the first year spells, he still wanted to be able to say that he had good notes.

After the (very dull) notes had been completed, the professor handed out matchsticks to turn into needles. Harry attempted to do a partial transformation, but it was such a simple task in comparison to what he had been able to do before that his partial transformation was still quite good, appearing to be a needle with a wooden texture. 

_Ah shit._

He was about to try and fix it (read mess it up), but he didn't get the chance when Draco leaned over and said, loudly, “Wow, Harry! How’d you do that?”

_I'm going to skin that little brat alive._

_Don't you_ **_dare_ ** _, snake face._

The professor had made her way over to their table, and he begrudgingly held up his (almost) perfect transfiguration. She took it and looked at it closely. “Very good Mr. Potter, it is the right shape and color, but the material is still wood.” She snapped it in half easily to prove her point, smiling warmly at him, she awarded 10 points to slytherin before handing him another one to use.

“Harry! How’d you do it?” Draco was still nagging him, so he turned to the blonde and shrugged noncommittally, “Just followed my tutors instructions, Blase’s mom’s tips were helpful as well.”

Both his desk mates hounded him for specific advice, and he spent the rest of the period regurgitating his own experiences as if they were teachings from a tutor. 

Their next class wasn't till after lunch, so they decided to wander around the grounds with the other slytherin first years. Harry noticed Granger and Weasley were following them from a distance, and mostly just ignored it.

After lunch they had Herbology, which was rather uneventful, all things considered. Tom kept making quips about Neville, who was doing quite well in Hufflepuff.

_That boy has a green thumb and nothing else, I can sense it._

_He has the wrong wand Tom, you've seen the memories._

_I stand by my statement._

Deciding to branch out to Neville, he dragged Draco over to him at the end of class to say hi.

“How's Hufflepuff treating you, mate?” Draco grumbled something about badgers and good-for-nothings, Harry elbowed him.

“Oh..um. It's alright I guess, the common room is really cozy, but I'm rooming with Earnest Macmiliian, and he's kinda pretentious.”

“Like Draco here?” An afronted noise from the blonde, “I'm sure you could ask to move if he gets too annoying.”

“Yea, good point.”

They chatted for a bit longer while Draco sulked. He invited Neville to explore the castle with the other Slytherin first years, but seeing so many Slytherins in one place made him nervous, for some reason, and he declined.

Walking back into the castle, Draco rounded on him, sounding insecure, “I'm not really pretentious am I?”

“It's endearing.”

He beamed.

* * *

Tom closed and locked the door to the chamber of secrets, agitated. He was spending more and more time watching the world outside his pupils mind. Too much in fact, as he had been neglecting his plans in favor of taking in the life of a student.

“Well, no more of that. Dumbledore is already making ripples.”

Striding over to the western wall, he took in the four doors in front of him. The diary door had disappeared immediately after the two horcruxes combined, leaving the ring, locket, cup, and diadem doors without their predecessor. Over the years of Harry’s childhood, Tom had been able to steal a few of the more important memories from the other horcruxes, but as he had expected, they didn't trust him in the slightest. The locket had been up for conversation, mostly to complain that one Regulus Black had stolen it away from the cave, entrusting its care in the insane Black family house elf, Kreature. Which was unfortunate, really, but the barmy elf was unable to destroy it, which was a relief.

Tom let out a breath, the other horcruxes might come around eventually, but for now he would continue to carefully steal their memories.

“Havin’ trouble?”

“...I am more stubborn than I initially expected, unfortunately.”

Fate nodded behind him, rocking back and forth on her heels. The goddess had been helping him with the plot, working out the kinks in his plan and filling the holes in his knowledge. He secretly thought she was just making sure things worked out the way she wanted them too, though.

“You are aware that this will destroy you.” Fate was testing him, he was sure. Tom sighed, he no longer saw himself as a contender in this game, he was a stepping stone, nothing more. A martyr to the cause, so to speak. Taking down Dumbledore was more important than him.

“I know.” 

She smiled gently, he didn't see it, having his back facing her, “You've still got quite a few years left, Riddle. Don't rush your own suicide.” and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the first day of classes, I'm obviously not going to have this go day by day, that would take years to write, but I'm going to have roughly 10-20ish chapters per school year, depending on how many things happen.


	12. Harry Likes the Color Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Classes at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were going quite well, if only Hermione Granger would stop breathing down his neck.  
> In the wake of Tom's momentary absence, Harry has a few disturbing revelations about his future creature inheritance, and a new taste on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter has disturbing images, detailed accounts of cannibalism, and is generally quite bloody. The worst of it is preceded by a warning similar to this one, so if you are uncomfortable about that, you can skip over it.

The next few weeks were quiet, Harry went to classes like normal, and continued to expose Draco to Thasin at night. At least until the first Monday of the school year, when Blaise had cornered him in the baths, eyes wild,  _ “if you don't get that blasted snake under control I’m taking it to Professor Snape, I refuse to keep waking up to screaming each morning!” _

After that he had Thasin sneak up Dracos legs or slither across his shoulders in the common room instead, depending on if he was standing or sitting. The other Slytherins got used to hearing the blond randomly start screeching, and paid it no mind.

Draco had told him (read yelled, furious) to ‘keep that bloody snake away from me!’, when Harry pointed out that Draco was getting better around her, and being afraid of snakes in Slytherin was almost a guarantee to get pranked, and he should be happy no one had snuck anything venomous in to do just that. This likely didn’t help the poor boys fear, mind you, but no one ever said immersion therapy was easy.

One thing was strange development that upset the balance was Tom’s leaves of absence. Tom was taking more time to himself, which is not out of character for him of course, but Harry figured that he would want to watch Dumbledore closely. Whatever, what Tom did was none of his business until Tom made it his business.

Harry was sitting in the common room, thinking about his classes. Potions had been the biggest change compared to his first life. Snape was extremely pleasant to him, meaning that the man never singled him out but also didn't make an effort to compliment him, which was all Harry could hope for, really. The first potions class had started and ended without incident, since Snape didn't feel like acknowledging that he existed and Neville was no longer in Gryffindor, so no one blew up a cauldron. It was actually one of his favorite classes now, mostly because he was sitting as far from the Gryffindor spies as possible. 

Speaking of which, Hermione Granger was a bloody menace. Harry had begun avoiding the library like the plague, asking Draco or Blaise to grab the necessary books for his homework and bringing them to the common room so he didn't have to go near it. Granger seemed to patrol the thrice damned library every second of the day, and the moment he would sit down at a table she would suddenly appear with a stack of books and talking a mile a minute. He was polite to her, if a little distant, but Draco was constantly antagonistic. The first time the blonde had called her a mudblood, she turned to look at Harry to see what he would do, Harry played dumb.

_ “No one wants you here, you filthy little mudblood!”  _

_ Granger sucked a breath through her teeth, and sent an accusatory look towards Harry, who was reading a book, not paying attention. “You hang out with people like this?!” she screeched, Draco shifted, looking like he was about to lunge over the table and strangle her. _

_ “Sorry what?” he looked up, innocently.  _

_ Granger huffed, “he just called me a mudblood!”  _

_ “Whats a mudblood?” he replied, Draco and Blaise looked at eachother and started snickering, Harry had chastised them for using the word before, he obviously knew what it meant. _

_ “It's a VERY rude word for muggle-born.” Granger huffed indignantly, puffing up with self-importance. _

_ “Oh… well, Draco that was awfully rude of you.” _

_ She sputtered. _

Harry was hoping that she went straight to Dumbledore after that and complained for thirty something minutes about him being ignorant or whatever, it would certainly help his image with the Headmaster. The dumber the better as it goes.

_ I'm doing far too well in school.  _ He frowned, that was another issue. It was difficult to purposefully fail at casting spells, and he was doing better in his classes than he wanted. Sadly, it was too late at this point to change anything, even if he did get better at being bad, the professors would question a drop in abilities. That wasn't even mentioning his essays, which were way too good for a  _ third  _ year much less a firstie. 

He sighed, closing the book he was pretending to read about the animagus transformation, and leaned back into the plush couch. Him, Draco, Blaise, and their newest addition: Theodore Nott, who was more of a shadow than an active participant in conversations, were all sitting around one of the fireplaces in the common room. Blaise and Draco were playing exploding snap, and Theo was reading a book.

Stretching languidly, Harry shifted, resting his arm across the back of the couch and leaning onto it. Glancing lazily at the two playing the card game, Harry thought forward to Halloween. It was doubtful that Quirrell would be after the stone again, and Harry didn't see anything in the Daily Prophet about a break-in, meaning that it hadn't happened.

_ I should check to see if the traps are the same. _

He didn't see the harm in stealing the stone, since he wasn’t going to use it. Harry fully accepted that he'd die one day, he hadn't decided what he would do after the fact but there was time for that. Stealing the stone to then give back to the Flamels in an act of good will was an opportunity he couldn't just let pass by.

“I'm turning in for the night.” various and noncommittal good-nights all around.  _ Perfect. _

Getting up, Harry grabbed his book and walked back up into the boys dorms. Besides the issues with Granger, he was feeling all sorts of withdrawal symptoms. He hadn't killed and reanimated a damn thing for the entire time he had been at Hogwarts, which was almost a month now, and he was missing the taste of blood. 

Placing his book in his trunk, he grabbed a few necessary tools and attached them to his belt. Leaving the dorm, he went out and into the first-year's bathroom, peaking in and glancing around to make sure there was no one currently inside. Walking into the third shower stall on the right, he whispered a quiet  _ “~open~”  _ to the shower head. Standing back, he adjusted the knives attached to his belt, so they wouldn't clink against each other. And watched and the wall fell away to reveal a dusty passage into the bowls of Hogwarts.

Lighting his wand with a ‘lumos’,he started walking swiftly down the hall, turning and climbing stairs with practiced ease, Tom had gifted him the knowledge of several hidden passageways in the Slytherin dorms and commons, and he planned to use them to their full potential today.

After about 30 minutes, he had been climbing stairs for a long time now, he found that he was coming up onto his desired exit. Brushing his hand gently against a brick, the wall faded away, revealing a very familiar room. Peeking inside, he was happy to note that it was completely empty, except for a fat rat sleeping on one of the beds. Creeping further into the first year Gryffindor boys dorm, he sent a quick stunner off at Pettigrew with the elder wand. The wand truly was perfect for him, and amazingly, no one had realized just what it was yet.

He picked up the rat and walked back into the hidden passage, not before stroking a different stone and watching the wall shimmer back into existence. He started making his way back down.

Harry was walking for another 20 minutes, taking a different route and happening upon just what he was looking for: a point in the passage that widened enough to be considered a small room.

He poured more power into his lumos and got to work.

**Warning: Gore, cannibalism, disturbing imagery. Skip to the other bolded text if you have a light stomach or don't want to read about any of the above.**

Harry used the spell that turned animaguses back to humans on Pettigrew with practiced familiarity, screwing his nose up in disgust at the man. To make sure he wouldn't move if the stunner wore off, Harry used a simple cutting curse to sever the rats spinal cord at the base of his neck.

Turning him over onto his back, and using the lumos to guide him, he unhooked one of his sharper knives and slowly started cutting. Starting at the man's collarbone, Harry started sawing away at the man's tissue, struggling at first to cut deep, with the rib cage blocking his way. Once he started cutting down the man's stomach though, the long knife sank deeper into his fat, and Harry had to use a sawing motion with the blade to get through it all. Once he was done the man had been gutted like a fish, and blood had quickly started gushing out of the wound.

Getting a strong whiff of the blood, Harry's pulse started to quicken. He felt his nerves tingle and for a moment he felt like his fingers were growing longer, this was  _ new _ . Temporarily losing control of his wits, he shoved his hand deep into the incision, groping around the slimy guts and pulling out a long tube of intestine. He looked at it, in the dull light it appeared smooth, and wet, pulsing faintly. It was warm, and so,  _ so _ tempting. Something in him snapped, and he leaned forward and licked some blood off it. Curious, Harry tilted his head slightly, the man tasted a little like a rat, but there was an overwhelming flavor of… something else.

_ So that's what human blood tastes like. _

He licked his lips. It was good. 

Losing all sense of rationality, Harry opened his mouth wide and bit down hard on the unidentified intestine. It was difficult to chew, he needed something that was good at tearing, and ended up using one of his knives to saw a portion off, but other than that he found himself enjoying it immensely...

Something made Harry wish he had a mouth full of sharp, dangerous teeth.

Setting down the long, slippery intestine, Harry started carving out the sides of the incision, making the whole thing into the shape of a capital ‘i’. Pulling apart the two flaps of skin and fat he just created, he grimaced as the rat's yellow fatty tissue squelched around his hands unpleasantly. Finally getting the flaps spread, he wiped his hands on Pettigrew's ratty pants and looked, delighted, for the next thing to taste test. Taking his time, Harry took at least one bite out of each of the man's internal organs. He had to shove both hands in, elbows deep in the man's guts as he groped around for his kidneys. Some tasted better than others, but the heart was definitely his favorite. He ate the entire thing. It had miraculously still been beating when he first bit into it, and blood sprayed like a geyser all over his face and jumper.

Harry barely noticed.

The longer he ate the more delirious he became, at one point he was on his hands and knees, with his face shoved deep in the man's guts, eating glutinously like a savage. He was dazed, hungry, attacking his food like a starved animal. He blacked out for a time, and when he finally came down from whatever high he’d been on, his hands, face and jumper were sticky with drying blood. He didn't know how long he had been kneeling there, with his face pointed skyward. He appeared as though he had been praying… or howling. Breathing heavily, he looked down at what was left of Pettigrew, which really wasn't much. The man's stomach was wide open, globs of yellow fat and leftover innards splayed around him, at some point Harry had gouged out his eyes messily and ate those too, apparently, he couldn't remember anything past eating the heart.

**End of gory bit :)**

“Well isn't that just delightfully disgusting.”

Harry whipped around, the animalistic look in his eyes returning and a large butcher's knife in hand.

“Easy kid.”

Death was looking down at him, emotionless.

“I-,” Harry gulped, “I didn't realize that-” he took a deep breath, suddenly overwhelmed.

Athimus was quiet, watching him with an unreadable expression. It was hard to tell anything in the low light, but Harry thought he might have looked pleased.

“Pettigrew is important, I'm afraid, so you'll have to bring him back.”

Harry didn't think he could stand, much less do an entire bloody resurrection ritual, pun not intended.

“Can’t you do it?”

“I s’pose.”

Harry took a few more gulps of air, the smell of iron overwhelming him still, “Brilliant.”

His vision went black.

* * *

Tom was making his way back down the tunnel, wrinkling his nose at the smell and feeling of drying blood.

“I'm going to go get cleaned up, can I trust you'll place the rat back where it was found?”

Death trailed behind him, crouched, he was too tall for the ceiling.

“Naturally. Thanks for taking over for Harry, it would have been a bother if I had to lug him back.”

“Whatever.” he muttered under his breath. Tom had been annoyed when the death god showed up in his mindscape, telling him to get out there and help. But he had been  _ really  _ pissed when he opened his eyes to a bloodbath and himself right in the middle of it. Tom may have been a sadist, but he didn't want to be the one covered in blood.

He spit, and tried to get something stringy out of his teeth.

* * *

Harry woke up the next morning, clean of blood and lying in bed. 

_ Don't make that a common occurrence, leech. I don't appreciate the taste of human flesh like you do. _

Harry’s brain was still trying to catch up, and he felt very much like he had in the bleached out Kings Cross so long ago. Just like then, something huge had happened, he could feel it. Harry felt strange, in a good way though, like he had been slightly off kilter all his life and had suddenly shifted into place.

_ Sorry Tom, I'll try not to pass out again. _

_ Just stop eating people! _

_ Sorry again, but that's not happening. _

Getting out of bed, Harry distantly registered Tom grumbling angrily about having to floss something out of his teeth.

Harry was going through the motions the rest of the day. Sitting in Defense Against the Dark Arts, he stared blankly at the wall behind Quirrell's head. The man had male pattern baldness at 30, which was unfortunate for him, and no turban. So… definitely not possessed, at least not by Voldemort.

“Mr. Potter, what is the incantation for the shield charm?”

He also didn't have that stupid stutter.

“Protego, sir.”

“Very good, ten points to Slytherin.”

The man was still a closet Death Eater though, and had an unhealthy obsession with Harry. He was glad, not for the first time, that Neville was in Hufflepuff. Without the poor boy breaking his wrist in flying class, the most exciting thing that had happened was Weasley calling him a ‘budding dark lord’. If Dumbledore was trying to get the brat to be his friend, he was doing a pretty shoddy job of it.

The rest of the day was a blur, and he barely registered it when Draco challenged Weasley to a duel in the trophy room.

His first moment of clarity that day was late at night. Draco was boasting about tricking Weasley into going out in the middle of the night to Theo, who was shoving his nose further and further into his book, to the point that there was no way he could still read the words. 

Harry, tensed, he ground his teeth as an uncomfortable pressure started to build up in his head, and a loud heartbeat in his ears drowned out all other noise. He felt heat behind his eyes, and the pressure only got worse. As soon as it came however, it was gone. Looking up, Harry had the inexplicable urge to stir the drama pot.

“Draco, did you know there's a cerberus on the third floor?”

Conversation stopped. The entire common room went quiet.

“Pardon?”

“I overheard the Weasley twins talking about it,” That wasn't even a lie, apparently the twins had gone to check out the third floor during the first week of classes. Though, Harry was hardly paying attention to what was a lie and what wasn't at the moment. His brain was kicked up into overdrive, the sound of a heartbeat rang in his ears again, and he felt the pressure starting to build up, twice as intense as before. A plan started fliting through his mind, almost too fast for him to process it. Tell Slytherin house about the cerberus, they'll complain to their parents, their parents will then complain to the the ministry, the ministry will send aurors to remove it, they find the stone, Flamel is called, he gets the stone back, Harry writes a letter to Flamel telling him that he was the one who started the whole thing, Harry is guilt free and in Flamel’s favor. It wasn't a perfect plan, and was banking on Flamel not having given Dumbledore his consent to take the stone, but the heat behind his eyes made him absolutely positive that it would work. It was certainly better than going in and springing the traps himself, he reasoned later. Harry took a breath, the pressure edging off. The moment had only been milliseconds long, and it went unnoticed by everyone. Settling himself, he continued his fear mongering, “It was behind one of the doors. Had nearly bitten one of them in half, apparently. From what I could tell, it only took an alohmara to get the door open. Just a matter of time before some spacey idiot gets eaten, really.”

Murmurs spread around the room, Draco looked a sickly shade of white, and Theo had already brought out some parchment and was writing furiously.

The next day, several Slytherins approached the twins to get details about the confrontation. They were at first perplexed, using the opportunity to prank a Slytherin in close proximity. Soon though, they realized the topic of conversation was spread through the entire Slytherin house, and started over exaggerating their story, only slightly.

…….by the end of the day, it was common knowledge in Slytherin that the third floor corridor was home to a cerberus, several dementors, a pack of werewolves, and a huge 30 ton slug.

The owls left that afternoon carrying loads of letters to family about it, and all that was left was to wait.

* * *

Lying in bed that night, Harry reflected on the day previous. Cannibalism wasn't something he had ever considered, and it had left him spacey for most of the day after. His moment of intense focus and ingenuity that swiftly followed though… Harry had a feeling that the two were intertwined in some way. He couldn't forget that feeling of blood behind his eyes, that buildup of pressure. That heartbeat… he could have sworn he had also heard chanting.

“Death.” he whispered softly to the room, and a large hand landed on his forehead, brushing away his hair. The smell of smoke wafted under his nose, and Harry settled deeper under the covers. Harry couldn't recall when the god had stopped appearing with a bang, but he welcomed it nonetheless.

“Is this a side effect of necromancy too?” he whispered to the shadows.

“I'm afraid necromancy can’t be used as an excuse for this one, kid.”  _ Damn. _ He had been afraid of that, necromancy was  _ such _ an easy out most of the time.

“Is it something to do with my creature inheritance?”

“It could be,” Harry obviously wasn't going to get a clear answer, at least not today, “tell me something, kid, what kind of magical creature eats humans? One that has a particular taste for blood?”

_ Uh…  _ “85% of them?” A deep chuckle resonated through the room, settling deep in his bones and easing his mind.

“That's the only hint you're getting from me.” and then Death was gone, with nothing but the whisper of a kiss on Harry’s forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohh boy. So here's what's going on if you've missed it:  
> I hate it in creature inheritance tropes when the inheritance happens completely out of nowhere. PEUBERTY doesn't work that way, why should some other growth related thing just come out of nowhere? So lets say that a creature inheritance (in my stories) is a gradual thing, that can be hinted at in small mannerisms and... *ahem* food preference's before it really starts up. It will always pick up speed on the 13th birthday, becoming almost fully realized, this meaning that the person will be able to start to shift their appearance at will to emulate their creature. But again, its gradual, they wont suddenly become a fully fledged (enter creature here) till they also finish puberty. That's where most of this chapter is coming from, I would also like to note that you can give your guesses on what harry is in the comments if you want, but I wont confirm or deny it any theories.


	13. This is Halloween, Everybody Make a Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past several months had passed in a blur, and suddenly, Halloween had come. Harry is becoming increasingly agitated with Tom, and Draco just cant keep his fat mouth shut.  
> Dumbledore destroys some important devices, and has a bit of a hissy fit.

Harry felt shaken for months, waking up early to go into the bathroom when no one was awake. He would stare for hours at his reflection, unblinking. He felt like he was being stretched, elongated in some way; it was as if he had an extra bone in each finger, or a few extra rows of ribs. His gums had been hurting for weeks, as if he was growing another set of teeth to replace his current ones. The worst thing, though, was what kept making him wake up early to watch his reflection. In the dark of a dimly lit bathroom, Harry watched his eyes, mesmerized, as something behind them glowed, faintly. It didn't always happen, and sometimes he was just starting at a normal reflection, but when he did see it, he was always forced to remember the feeling of blood boiling behind his eyes.

Harry went to his classes.

Tom was also more absent than usual, which added to his growing nerves. The only thing that seemed to ease his mind a little was Draco, who had noticed his twitchy behavior and took it upon himself to chatter in Harry’s ear almost constantly. It helped, actually, and Harry was finally able to realize what Thasin had meant by ‘bird-boy’.

Draco moved in fast, choppy movements, with his head snapping around in a way _very_ reminiscent of a bird. His laugh was also veering on the edge of chirps, and his pointed face made him appear even more bird-like. It was subtle, barely noticeable in a way that only someone who had been staring at the blonde for hours on end would have been able to point out. Harry wondered distantly if Draco also had some creature blood in him; if he did, the other boy was having a much better time with it than he was.

Halloween had arrived.

The owls sent out by the Slytherin house had done their job, and in the months afterwards, angry and worried parents flocked to the ministry in droves. Lucius Malfoy himself could be seen having a whispered conversation with Fudge, the pudgy man growing more and more red with anger. 

None of this showed up in the papers though, and the young Potter heir was worried that his plan wasn't going to work. What he did not know, however, was that the ministry was a mess; you needed to do a lot of political hoop jumping to be able to legally storm Hogwarts, and the ministry didn't have the primary account of the incident, so it was slow going. It was, at least, until the Weasley twins also sent their personal story straight to their father while he was at work, which sent the auror department into a tizzy. The two mischievous Weasley boys did this on the prompting of an anonymous letter, strangely enough:

**Good evening pranksters-**

**As you may know, the third floor is currently out of bounds and quite dangerous. The ministry appears to be brushing it aside for now, a pity. It is quite a deplorable thing you know, letting all those dangerous beasts roam the castle; I wonder what would happen if you both owled your father about it? While he was at work perhaps? Chaos, most likely.**

**-Your friend, the Riddler**

Harry didn't know about this letter of course, and if Tom had woken up one night to slip it to an owl? Well he certainly didn’t tell Harry. The ministry had enough proof to storm the castle after that; Fudge, in all his glory, decided that the perfect time for that would be all Hallows eve.

Harry was eating quietly at the Slytherin table during the Halloween feast. Glancing to his right, Draco was ranting loudly about the disrespectful decorations, “Samhain is a celebration of the dead, it is _supposed_ to be a day of quiet remembrance, and the headmaster is dragging our holiday through the _mud_ with this blasphemy!”

 _Day of the dead eh?_ Harry could certainly agree with that. He had been feeling the veil thinning all day long. It had started with the smell of cigarette smoke at breakfast, which got more and more prominent as time went on. He saw flashes of gold and green in his peripherals, and felt a large hand on his shoulder constantly.

_Day of the dead indeed._

Without any warning, the doors to the great hall burst open with a loud _bang_. Looking from the feast, everyone in the hall watched with confusion as the Minister and Amelia Bones strolled down the walk to the head table. Upon reaching it, the Headmaster and Minister partook in a very quietly whispered conversation. Dumbledore appeared upset, and rose from the table, striding out of the hall with them.

“What do you think that was about?” Blaise whispered from his left. 

_You're welcome, leech._

_Tom? What did you do._

“I'm not sure. Maybe they're finally doing something about the cerberus?” This prompted the entire Slytherin table to break out into hushed whispers, which slowly spread across the hall. Once the Gryffindors got wind of this, the Weasley twins started boasting something awful, and Harry had a gut feeling that it was all Tom’s fault. Harry was quiet through all that, thinking; not only was Tom plotting something big, but he was sneaking around at night too. He usually left Tom to his own devices, not wanting to encroach on the mans private time, but at this point he felt like he had a right to know at least some of what he was plotting.

_Later, I promise. I've been very busy is all._

_Yea, I noticed._

The deputy Headmistress rose from her chair and quieted the room, “please continue to eat the feast, I'm sure that whatever is going on is of no concern to any of you.” 

Students certainly felt it was when an auror burst in and ran in a dead sprint up to the head table. She threw herself half over the table to hiss something at Hagrid, who burst to his feet and ran out, the auror at his heels.

“Ok something is definitely going on with the third floor.” Blaise was practically vibrating with excitement, he was almost as obsessed with drama as Parkinson was, who was currently sneaking up to the head table to interrogate Snape.

Whispers broke out again after the half-giant left, and Parkinson looked very smug when she sat back down at the table, leaning forward and motioning with her hand for everyone else to do the same, “apparently, the dog is named Fluffy, and Hagrid is his owner,” the other first years gasped, Harry, who couldn't be bothered to pretend to care about it, was quiet. “Isn't that amazing? I wonder if he'll get fired!” Parkinson's face twisted up into a nasty smirk, and the other Slytherins first years started to spread word it down the table.

Within ten minutes the entire Ravenclaw house was also aware of what was going on, and one of them slipped off to tell the Hufflepuffs, who were overheard by the Gryffindors, who, naturally, already knew about the dog, since over half of them had been dared to go down the corridor at some point in the year.

The students were soon corralled and sent back to their common rooms early by a very cross McGonagall, stifling a sigh, Harry followed quietly behind Draco, who had started his anti-Halloween rant again.

“Samhain is just that much better too! Honestly this entire thing was a mockery of wix-kind, no respectable person would ever-”

“What, think you're better than the rest of us, Malfoy?” a very familiar and completely unwanted voice sounded from behind them, Ronald Weasley had followed the slytherins down to the dungeons… for a stupid reason, no doubt.

Draco sneered, looking down his nose at the ginger and opening his mouth to say something that would no doubt make things worse, “I _am_ better than you, Weasel, or do you forget that your family lives in a barn?” There it is, ever the provoker.

Harry sighed, he really wasn't in the mood for this, he had expected his first year to be quiet, or at the very least free from strange occurrences, but the cannibalism incident had turned that thought on its head. He was off his game, and Tom was really not _bloody_ helping with his secretive BULLSHIT.

Harry was growing agitated as he watched the two verbally claw at each others throats. He was sure Draco could handle it, but he _really_ didn't like it when the blonde got into confrontations like this, it made his skin tingle unpleasantly.

“Draco.” he was ignored by the boy in favor of making another rude remark about the Weasley matriarch.

“ _Draco.”_ Weasley was raising his voice, and could now be considered yelling, Draco met his pitch with gusto.

 **"** **Draco Lucius Malfoy, get your sorry ass over here NOW.”**

That however, made both of them pause. Turning to look at Harry, who was standing stock stiff, his arms across his chest and eyes narrowed dangerously. Both of the now quiet boys gulped, fearful. There was a beat of silence, before Draco slunk meekly over to Harry, who then turned and walked (because he does not _stomp_ ) over to the other Slytherins, who were watching the confrontation with wide eyes. Harry could distantly feel Draco grab ahold of his sleeve, but he wasn't paying attention. Something about that argument made him want to lock Draco away in the dorms, where he couldn't get out and agitate the _enemy._ Because that was what was happening, really. Granger and Weasley may not be much of a threat now, but in a few years they will be. Draco constantly antagonizing them will paint a _very_ big target on the boy’s back later on. Harry stormed to the front of the pack, the crowd parting for him quickly. Reaching the front he kept walking, planning on giving Draco a very firm talking to once they were safely in the dorms.

He didn't see, too caught up in his anger, as the rest of Slytherin followed behind him and Draco, warry. They had all heard about the opening feast, and the dangerous look in Potter’s eyes during the confrontation with the Parkinson chit, but most of them had thought the firsties were over exaggerating. Apparently, it was quite real… and terrifying.

Many of the older years considered, not for the first time, that perhaps Harry Potter was someone to watch out for. The boy was a genius, that much was obvious, he breezed by in his classes, almost instantly understanding and casting spells that took his classmates a week to perfect. Some of the seventh years, who were teachers' aides, had graded a few of his essays too, and had been shocked by his eloquence and knowledge in the subjects. He was turning in essays that a third year would be proud of! A few of them had heard he had a private tutor, but that's the only rumor about his life before Hogwarts that had managed to get out of the boy's close-knit group of friends. 

Gemma Farley had known the boy was someone to watch since her first conversation with him. He was _too_ sweet, _too_ polite, it had unsettled her, and on her way back to the front of the group she thought it was strange how a boy like that could wind up in Slytherin. That was, at least, till she had glanced back at him, watching as he verbally tore a hole in Malfoy’s ass. 

She smiled as she watched his retreating form, the shorter boy following sullenly behind him. No, she had known from that moment that the Potter heir was going to be someone great. What she wanted now, however, was to get in his good graces. Her family wasn't pureblooded or influential by any means, but they knew how to sniff out power, and that boy was power incarnate. It was time to make her move.

* * *

Headmaster Dumbledore was furious, some _fool_ had gone and told the _ministry_ about Hagrid's pet, sending Cornelius Fudge on a warpath right to his door. He had been forced to take the minister, Madam Bones, and twelve aurors through the carefully set traps and reveal to them the stone. This wasn't the plan at all! _Everything_ had been going _so well_ , Ronald had reported back to him just the day before that the Potter brat was eating out of his palm (he hadn't taken into account the possibility that the boy had been lying through his teeth). The granger girl was having trouble getting through the boy's friends yes, but she was reporting that he was quiet, withdrawn, and (most importantly) knew next to nothing about wizarding culture or politics. And yet this one thing was going to ruin the entire year's plans in one foul swoop!

He took a deep breath, sitting down at his desk in the headmasters office, Dumbledore watched distantly as Amelia Bones and Cornelius argued about what to do with the stone. Since it was Nicholas Flamel’s property, Bones was insistent on returning it to him, but the minister wanted to hand it to the unspeakables to study. Neither option appealed to him in any way, so he kept silent, stewing. 

The philosopher's stone and the traps that protected it had two very important purposes: the first being to draw Tom out of hiding, and the second being a trial run for the god forsaken boy-who-lived and his friends. Neither were applicable now, as he hadn't seen any signs of Tom, and Harry Potter was still in the _wrong house_ surrounded by the _wrong people_ . Which was another thing that was bothering him, the boy and Severus didn't appear to hate each other in the slightest, and he worried that that could mean that the anti-Slytherin compulsions he had placed on the boys Hogwarts letter didn't take. Perhaps one of the Dursleys had grabbed it first? What was even more frustrating was that he couldn't even find a good excuse to get close enough to the boy to tell what compulsions he had on him! _Blast_. If the child had done what he was supposed to and gone after the philosopher's stone, the fallout would have been a perfect excuse to see what all was still in effect. He was sure the blocks on the boys core had mostly been broken, going off what the professors say about his casting abilities. The intelligence block was likely also partially unbound, since he was doing rather well on his homework as well. 

_I'll have to fix that._

Leaning back, Dumbledore amused the idea of sneaking his way into the boy’s dorm room to recast the blocks while he was asleep, until he realized a fatal flaw in recasting the blocks at all. If he renewed the blocks, it would be extremely obvious to the professors that the boy was suddenly dumber and less adept, even if Dumbldore obliviated them of the knowledge it wouldn't work, they would still have the grades registered and would be able to see them at any time. Compulsions to ignore the boy were also out, as many of the professors had devices to pick up on negative spell work within a certain vicinity.

“Now Cornelius, Nicolas and Pernell will want their stone back I'm sure. It's the right thing to do, return it to them, that is.” he spoke warmly, smiling as serenely as possible. He’ll have to come up with some other way to dumb the boy down.

“Yes- uh.. Yes I suppose you have a point, Albus.” The nervous man readjusted his bowler cap and pat himself down, “-but I can't in good conscience allow just anyone to take it to them, it's a priceless artifact!.”

“Of course Cornelious, I can return it to them myself. I know them personally, as you well know. It will be no trouble, I'm sure.” Of course he wouldn't actually be returning it, but they needn't know that. If he was able to get the ministry out of Hogwarts again, then he could still use the stone for something else, but he needed to get his hands back on it first.

“Absolutely not, Headmaster.” he frowned, Madam Bones was always going to be an issue, he should put her down on the list of people that needed to have an unfortunate accident, “you were the one to toke it from the Flamels in the first place, I'll have Moody deliver it.” Before he could argue, Cornelius swiftly agreed, “Very good Amelia, I'm sure Alastor is the best one for the job. Well then, headmaster, I'll see myself out.” Madam Bones grabbed the stone and took her leave as well, the door shutting behind them. 

In a fit of rage, the headmasters office was destroyed by an intense wave of magic. The only things left untouched were the paintings of old headmasters and mistresses of Hogwarts, whose protective wards could withstand an army’s siege twice over. Sitting in the carnage, Albus Dumbledore fumed silently, too bothered by his rage to notice that he had completely obliterated all the tracking and monitoring devices cued to one Harry Potter. 

Entering the dorm, Harry practically threw Draco onto his bed, before turning and pacing around the room like a caged animal. Draco watched, dumbfounded, as the taller boy muttered under his breath, his fingers twitching, eyes darting around the room. Draco had no illusions about the boy-who-lived. You had to have a particular amount of darkness in your soul to be able to kill the dark lord as an infant, after all, and it appears that whatever that darkness was had only gotten stronger as Harry aged.

“Harry-”

The aforementioned boy swung around and glared at him heatedly. Shutting his mouth with an audible click, Draco shifted slowly into a crisscross sitting position. Harry returned to his pacing. 

Something about the other boy's movements made Draco _very_ nervous. 

Shifting again, Draco twitched his head a few times, eyes darting around the room. It was a habit he seemed to pick up from his father, who said it was a mannerism passed down the Malfoy line. Draco didn't know how mannerisms of all things could be hereditary, but his ancestors' paintings did it as well, so it must have just been a Malfoy thing.

He felt a smooth head bump gently against his hand. Looking down, Draco watched as Harry’s snake smoothly slithered into his lap, curling up and hissing softly. Draco didn't know why he was afraid of snakes, it had been a constant thing in his life, much like his strange mannerisms. Although… he stopped, thinking. He had been doing more and more of his fathers twitchy mannerisms this year, perhaps it was because he missed the man? Shaking his head, he returned his eyes to the snake, and pet it gently. 

Harry was right in saying he needed to get over his fear of them before an older year decided to throw a cobra at him or something, and he had really been making an effort since that day. It got to the point where Thasin could slither into his shower stall and hiss at him, and he wouldn't even flinch. He was still terrified of other snakes, sure, but he knew Thasin was just a harmless, cuddly, little thing. 

He still made an effort to scream every time the snake touched him though, at least when Harry was around. The taller boy was a bit of a sadist, Draco had found, and every time Draco made a ruckus about the snake it put Harry in a better mood. Every once in a while the dark haired boy would even laugh a little at his antics, which made Draco’s week every time it happened. Harry looked so bored all the time, getting him to show positive emotion was always difficult, but always worth it.

This though… Draco looked back up to Harry, who was now sitting on his own bed, glaring at one of Blaise’s dirty socks that was lying on the floor.

“Harry…” he tried again, this time, the other boy looked up at him, a tired expression on his face.

“Harry, what did I do to upset you?”

The boy-who-lived sighed, and rubbed his hand across his cheek a few times, thinking. There was a beat where Harry seemed to argue with himself, he did that a lot as well, Draco had noticed.

“Weasley and Granger are spying on me for Dumbledore.”

Draco's eyes widened, that made _so much sense_. The mudblood had harassed them almost constantly in the library till Harry stopped going, and Weasley seemed insistent on making himself a big nuisance as often as he could. How Harry figured out about it was something to question, but it would certainly explain his agitation.

“You don't want the headmaster to know we're friends, do you. Is it because my father was a suspected Death Eater?” Draco was hurt, unnaturally so. Harry rolled his eyes.

“No you moron, if Weasley and Granger are in Dumbledore's pocket, what do you think is going to happen in a few years if you keep agitating them?”

 _Ooohhh… bugger._ “...He’ll let them get away with things, and if they hate me they might want to abuse that power.”

“Ten points to Slytherin.” Draco laughed. Thank merlin, good ol’ sarcastic Harry was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was excited to play around with Draco POV, which I haven't done yet. He's a sneaky little bastard, I'll give him that.  
> If you have any questions about this chapter, just let me know and ill answer them, unless its a spoiler of course ;)


	14. Have A Holly Jolly Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is returning to Privet Drive for the holidays, and is quickly swept up in the hustle and bustle of Christmas time. Quite annoyed with Tom still refusing to tell him anything, Harry looks to Death for answers, and receives familial comfort instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Holiday special? Perhaps.

Ron Weasley was very excited, he finally had something good to tell Dumbledore! Racing up the stairs to the headmasters office, Ron reflected on what had happened. He had been trying for months to make Potter realize that being in Slytherin would make him evil, but it hasn't really been working the way he wanted. Malfoy was definitely getting in the way, so he had chased after the Slytherins to confront the prat. The fight ended up getting pretty heated sure, but then Potter had told Malfoy off! He had looked _really_ mad too. 

Ron puffed up with pride, the boy-who-lived had finally realized who the good guys were! He had to admit, seeing the taller boy mad had been scary, but he knew that Potter had obviously been defending him, why would he tell Malfoy off he wasn't!

Reaching the door to the headmasters office, he was about to knock when the _Minister of Magic_ and _head of the DMLE_ stormed out. Ron stood there, floored, as the door swung shut.

Momentarily regaining his bearings, he moved to knock, but recoiled when he heard a huge _BANG_ come from inside. The sound of things falling and people cursing halted him further.

Standing stock still, Ron waited for any more noise, when he didn't hear another explosion, he tried to quietly knock on the door. Waiting, now quite nervous, Ron wondered what must have exploded. 

Suddenly curious, he pressed his ear against the door, he could still hear the aftershocks of whatever had happened, as there was the distinct sound of freshly broken things settling onto the floor.

_Maybe I should come back later_

* * *

He did come back later, about a week later, in fact. The headmaster was very happy with him, and said to continue to agitate the Malfoy heir. 

“It appears that your machinations are inadvertently guiding Harry back to the light. I'm very proud of you Ronald, and I'm certain you will succeed.” The headmaster had beamed at him, and after letting him take as many lemon drops as he pleased, sent him on his way.

Meeting Hermione in the hall, he explained what Dumbledore had said, and she agreed that it was a good plan. Walking back to the Gryffindor common room, Ron wondered just how Malfoy was able to convince Potter to go to Slytherin, was it a dark spell or something? He shivered, dark magic was _super_ scary, and Malfoy was probably trying to corrupt the boy-who-lived with it!

* * *

The rest of the term passed in relative peace for Harry, as he had Draco as an almost constant companion. Blaise was there too as well as Theo, but the young necromancer had most of his focus on the Malfoy heir. There was something about having the shorter boy nearby that was comforting to him, and with his strange creature inheritance, he needed all the comfort he could get.

One annoyance was Weasley, who was insistent on fighting with Draco every second he got. Draco had sassed back a few times, but had mostly kept to his promise and did not engage.

Granger, thankfully, had decided to fuck off, and was practically living in the library. Midterms were looming ever present on the horizon, and with them was the midyear rankings.

Harry wasn't stressed in the slightest, mostly just annoyed that he would have to deal with the tests at all. He wasn't going to show off, because he wasn't _stupid_ , but he was still going to put in the effort to get ranked high. He was still contemplating if he should purposefully do well enough to knock Granger out of the top spot when he walked into the great hall for breakfast on the first day of exams.

Glancing to the Gryffindor table, he saw the aforementioned girl pouring over stacks and stacks of notes, looking half savage and running mostly on adrenaline.

“She does realize midterms aren't like final exams, right? It's just for class rank.” Blaise whispered to him, earning a chuckle from Harry, who replied, “I don't think she cares. It's not about getting good grades for her, It's about beating everyone else.”

* * *

Harry did, in fact, beat her out of the top spot. Apparently, when the ranks were finally posted, Granger had attempted to convince the headmaster to fail him for _cheating._ What's more, was when he walked into the great hall for breakfast before he got on the train, she had marched right up to him and demanded that he fess up.

“I didn't see you studying in the library at ALL. There was no way you scored better than me when I studied for MONTHS!” 

He had looked at her with undisguised confusion, truly wondering how the hell she was that dense. She _knew_ he did well in classes, she complained about it _constantly._ Where did she get the idea he was cheating?

After saying this though, she simply huffed and said that he was obviously cheating in his classes as well, and that he had gotten extra help or a private tutor or something. When he pointed out that neither of those things were against the rules, or considered cheating, she had stormed off in a huff.

More confused than anything, Harry sat down at the Slytherin table.

 _What the fuck was up with that? Wild accusations aren't her kind of thing,_ Harry thought to himself, wondering if someone had snuck the muggleborn a potion that made her irrational, it was the only thing that really made any sense.

_Hmmm… yes, how strange._

Harry stopped, fork halfway to his mouth. He hasn't heard from Tom in _weeks_.

_Tom?_

_Yes leech?_

_...Where the fuck have you been?_

_I'll tell you once it's safe to do so._

Harry’s mind was _reeling._ Tom kept secrets yes, and he was obviously plotting something that he didn't want Harry to know about yet, but this… Tom said that it wasn't safe to discuss the matter inside Harry's _heavily occluded mind,_ meaning that either they were in deeper shit than he originally thought, or Harry learning about whatever Tom’s been doing will put the plan in jeopardy somehow. This thought led him to the possibility that he would really _not like_ whatever it is that Tom was planning.

* * *

Harry boarded the Hogwarts Express, a little happy that he was getting away from the castle for a while. It was really quite funny how Privet Drive had gone from his prison to a simple pleasure. No Dumbledore, no Granger and Weasley, no classes to hold back in, he was really looking forward to a fortnight in Surrey and a simple, muggle Christmas.

_Good luck with that._

_Fuck off Tom._

Harry settled into a compartment with Draco and Theo, who were both going home for Christmas as well. Blaise, apparently, didn't want to go home to meet his newest step-father, so he was staying at the castle. Harry thought it was awfully pessimistic of him, this one might end up lasting a few years after all, from his mothers letters she liked him a little bit more than the others. Besides, he'll have to live with the poor bloke, and might as well get to know him.

_It's not like you know what having a father is like, maybe he's gotten sick of it._

_You're one to talk, being the edgelord that killed_ **_both_ ** _of our dads._

_Well someone’s in a mood today._

Harry had every right to be in a mood, thank-you-very-much. He had gone almost a month without a word from Tom who had promised to explain some things the last time they spoke on Halloween, and hadn't. So when the bastard had just showed up out of _nowhere_ pretending that it was no big deal.. Well Harry felt that he had a right to be pissed about it!

* * *

Hopping off the train, Draco and Theo made their way over to their respective guardians. Saying goodbye and wishing them a Happy Christmas, Harry walked through the barrier and back into the muggle world. Greeting his aunt with a hug, Harry quickly found himself carted off to #4 Privet Drive in a whirlwind that could only be called Petunia Dursley’s Christmas Panic.

Walking in through the front door, Harry was met by Vernon, who clasped his shoulder firmly in a masculine display of affection, and offered to take his trunk.

* * *

Christmas Eve was a chaotic affair, with everyone running to and fro from the kitchen to the dining room, trying to get the Christmas feast placed before Marge showed up.

“Harry dear, Dudley is upstairs in the bedroom, can you tell him to come down? I need both of you to help with the pudding.”

His aunt was already off doing something else, barely registering his reply.

Walking up the stairs, Harry reflected on the past week. It was nice, being back at Privet Drive, but he felt stifled, constrained. He had been having the urge to get out and do it _fast_. It was making his enjoyment of the holidays awfully difficult. 

To sooth this urge some, Harry had taken to going out on the hiking trails around the neighborhood, walking through the snow for hours. Aunt Petunia fretted about him getting lost or kidnapped, he was only 11 after all, but he convinced her he’d be careful. He didn't really make that much of an effort to watch out for pedophiles though. He felt safe out in the woods, hidden by the trees and snow, it felt like home.

Harry could admit he had been taking on too much this year, he had originally wanted to hide in the shadows for his first three years, but ever since the sorting he had been forced into the limelight. With his creature inheritance slowly making itself known, and Dumbledore’s pawns licking at his heels, he was desperately looking for an out.

“Aunt Petunia needs help with the pudding.” looking into their shared bedroom, Harry found Dudley lying across the floor, playing dead, most likely.

He rolled his eyes, even in this life, Dudley was still pretty lazy. Nicer? Of course. Open to the idea of doing work? Not at all.

“I'll tell auntie you already broke your new Gameboy. You know, the one you were supposed to unwrap tomorrow?” Dudley darted up, fast as a bullet, out the door and down the stairs before Harry could blink.

_That's better._

* * *

After a Christmas feast to end all Christmas feasts, the Dursleys (and Harry) retired to bed. Almost every resident of the house fell to sleep quickly, bellies full and eyes droopy.

Harry though, was wide awake. The itch to run was worse when he was alone, and in this moment it was almost unbearable.

 _I need to get_ **_out._ **

Rocketing up out of bed, Harry didn't even think to put on shoes.

He was out of the house in under thirty seconds, sprinting full force into the woods behind it. The winter wind was cold on his face, and his lungs stung each time he took a breath of the freezing air. It was a white Christmas, snow falling gently, blanketing the forest floor. He could feel the biting snow on his bare feet as they pounded into the earth, his breathing was quick, a heartbeat that wasn't his own thumping in his ears.

**He had to shove both hands in, elbows deep in the man's guts as he groped around for his kidneys. Some tasted better than others, but the heart was definitely his favorite. He ate the entire thing. It had miraculously still been beating when he first bit into it, and blood sprayed like a geyser all over his face and jumper.**

A heartbeat that was not his own thumped rhythmically in his ears. He crashed through the underbrush, fighting against his human instincts that were screaming _Stop, just think. Slow down and_ **_THINK._ **

He pressed on.

**-but the heart was definitely his favorite. He ate the entire thing. It had miraculously still been beating when he first bit into it, and blood sprayed like a geyser all over his face and jumper.**

The heartbeat was getting louder, he could hear the chanting now. It was changing pitches randomly. Throaty and aggressive, he'd never heard anything like it before. It was beautiful, if terrifying.

 _Harry, just slow down and_ **_think._ ** _You need to get a hold of yourself._

It was strange, that voice sounded a little like Tom.

**It had miraculously still been beating when he first bit into it.**

Harry crashed out of the brush and into a clearing, stopping jerkily in the middle of it. The chanting had reached a crescendo, the singing merging together and overwhelming his senses. There wasn't just a heartbeat anymore, he could hear fast drums, the beat thumping rhythmically, vibrating his bones, making him shake all over. Was that a flute? He couldn't keep up with the instruments anymore.

Harry fell to his knees, face turned skyward. Staring, open mouthed at the stars.

The chanting surrounded him, almost screaming now, some of the voices sounded like hyenas laughing.

_Ba-bum... ba-bum... ba-bum... ba-bum_

His eyes were **burning**.

 _Harry,_ _please_ _listen to me! You need to snap out of it._

That voice definitely sounded like Tom, it was far away.

The chanting got impossibly louder, the drums picking up pace and the flute changing from a melodic tune to a high pitched screeching.

_STOPstopstopstopPleasestopstopimsorrypleasestop._

He was begging now, pleading and crying in pain, overwhelmed and _scared._

The chanting and instruments bled together into a horrible screeching, it was animalistic, twisted and inhuman and _oh god PLEASE just_ **_STOP._ **

It felt like his eyes were burning out of his skull.

_Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum_

He was screaming now, he was sure of it, the burning was unbearable, and oh god that _screeching_ what **_is_ ** _that._

“Harry.”

He couldn't think or feel or hear anything but that god awful _noise._ He almost wished that the chanting was back, _anything_ besides this.

“Harry, I'm sorry.”

 _Pleasestopstopimsorryplease_ **_stop_ ** _._

“I'm going to help. Ok?”

He screamed even louder, fighting to keep his sanity as the horrible screeching raised its pitch as well. 

“Harry. Harry, I'm sorry but you need to eat this, it'll help.”

 _Pleasepleasestop-oh god is that_ **_ME?!_ **

Someone grabbed his face, roughly shoving something warm down his throat. The screeching cut off as he bit down.

 _That_ **_was_ ** _me._

His vision went black.

* * *

Christmas morning was a bit different this year. Harry, having received magical presents for the first time, was passing a few of them around to the mesmerized Dursleys. Blaise had sent him a very expensive looking cloak clasp, it was a snake tangled into knots with the same coloring and head shape as Thasin, and was enchanted to move lazily in an infinity symbol. Speaking of Thasin, she had opted to stay at the castle with Blaise, who was very adept at heating charms. Theo had gotten him an encyclopedia of magical creatures, with a note saying that Draco got a similar one. There wasn't any explanation past that, so Harry just assumed that Theo was more insightful than he had originally thought.

Draco had got him a wand holster with the Potter crest on it, which made him smile. Harry was glad that he had put just as much thought and money into his friends’ gifts as they had into his. He had got Blaise an extremely expensive new cloak with snake themed trim, funnily enough. Theo had gotten the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, with a note saying that it was the closest muggles had gotten to guessing what the magical world was truly like, as well as some glasses that were enchanted to help you read faster and retain more. Draco had received muggle hair products as a gag gift, and a pair of cufflinks with the Malfoy crest on them that were enchanted to the gills with protective magic. 

A few of the older years had given him various magical treats, which he shared with the Dursleys. Vernon had exclaimed that it was the best chocolate he’d ever tasted, Honeydukes really was one of a kind.

Dudley and him had traded gifts right there, and the other boy had been ecstatic to receive a new pair of boxing gloves. Harry nearly laughed himself off his chair when he saw his present: a shitty Halloween witch costume, it seemed Dudley went for a gag gift this year. Harry had gotten a new bedroom from the Dursleys, which used to be the guest room, but had now been altered to suit the 11 year old boy. They had said that the two boys were getting too old for bunk beds, and it was time for them to each get their own space. Harry had hugged them both fiercely. This was the first time in both of his lives that he truly had a space that was just _his_. His cupboard and bedroom from the last life had been prisons, and this go round were both used as storage, but this room was all his. It was simple, and already had all his things moved in. There was a twin sized bed on the far wall, with a bedside table and a lamp. A dresser on the eastern wall held the muggle clothing he hadn’t taken with him to Hogwarts, and various knickknacks he had collected in his short life. Across from the dresser was a large desk that Harry automatically fell in love with. The best thing though, was one of the walls that was covered floor to ceiling with photos of his life with the Dursleys: visits to family and a vacation to the Bahamas, birthday parties and theme parks, happy memories of a happy boy. It was wonderful.

* * *

He was lying in his new bed that night, half asleep, when he smelt the cigarette smoke. His eyes flung open and he nearly sprang forward, looking towards the foot of the bed where a familiar silhouette was sitting.

“Death?” he breathed, “What are you doing here?”

The god stood, and walked over to Harry, brushing his hand over the boy's forehead, “got you a Christmas present.”

Turning on the lamp on his night stand, Harry reached for the package being held out to him. It was a rectangular box, wrapped with black wrapping paper with a pattern of… “are these skulls?”

Athimus smiled cheekily, “gotta stay on theme.”

Snorting softly, Harry peeled the morbid wrapping paper off the box. Putting the now bare box down in his lap, Harry gingerly lifted the lid off. Looking inside, he stared down at a _very_ familiar fabric.

“This is my invisibility cloak.”

“Mmhm.” Harry looked up with big eyes, a silent question. “I took it, along with the ender wand, from Dumbledore, and wiped his memory of them.”

_What._

“W-why?”

“Cuz they don't belong to him.”

Harry couldn't argue with that, and they sat in companionable silence for a few more minutes. Death shifted, and Harry looked up, meeting his eyes. Without prompting, the god reached over to the nightstand and switched off the light, bathing the room in darkness.

“What are you doing?”

“Just checking to see if you’re better now.” Harry could only tell the man had leaned forward, because his glowing gold and green eyes shifted closer in the dark. Athimus looked deep into the boys eyes, seemingly looking for something.

Harry was confused, “...checking if I'm better?” he half repeated, half questioned.

“Mmhm… I also wanted to apologize again.”

Harry was even more confused, “what are you talking about?”

Embers heated up in the man's cigarette as he took a deep breath in. He was still studying Harry's eyes. It was quiet for a moment, before the god of death exhaled.

“Harry, do you remember last night?”

**_STOPstopstopstopPleasestopstopimsorrypleasestop._ **

**He was begging now, pleading and crying in pain, overwhelmed and** **_scared._ **

**The chanting and instruments bled together into a horrible screeching, it was animalistic, twisted and inhuman and** **_oh god PLEASE just STOP._ **

**It felt like his eyes were burning out of his skull.**

**_Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum_ **

**He was screaming now, he was sure of it, the burning was unbearable, and oh god that** **_screeching_ ** **what** **_is that._ **

**“Harry.”**

**He couldn't think or feel or hear anything but that god awful** **_noise._ ** **He almost wished that the chanting was back,** **_anything_ ** **besides this.**

**“Harry, I'm sorry.”**

**_Pleasestopstopimsorrypleasestop._ **

**“I'm going to help. Ok?”**

**He screamed even louder, fighting to keep his sanity as the horrible screeching raised its pitch as well.**

**“Harry. Harry, I'm sorry but you need to eat this, it'll help.”**

**_Pleasepleasestop-oh god is that ME?!_ **

**Someone grabbed his face, roughly shoving something down his throat. The screeching cut off as he bit down.**

**_That was me._ **

Harry grasped his bed sheets tightly, heaving his chest as he took deep breaths of air. How did he forget about _that?_

“You were out there with me, in the forest.”

“I was.”

**It had miraculously still been beating when he first bit into it.**

“Go to sleep, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an attempt by me to give Harry a break for once... sadly I'm a bit of a sadist myself so it didn't pan out quite that way. Whoops?


	15. Harry Likes the Color White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter is returning to Hogwarts from the Holiday break. On the train ride he has a conversation with Daphne Greengrass, who is in the running for Slytherin princess.  
> Draco is upset by this, for some reason.  
> Theo continues to be uncomfortably insightful.

Harry was standing on platform 9 ¾, bundled up in winter apparel and feeling cross. He had been forced into roughly twelve layers of clothing by a fretting Petunia, who was worried that he would get frostbite standing out in the cold for so long. He had been insistent in showing up to the platform an hour early, mostly so he could assure himself a good compartment in the vicinity of possible allies. 

Harry had decided to shift gears over the holidays. New Year had passed without incident and he had spent most of it re-thinking the rest of the school year. The current Prince of Slytherin was a third year named Avery something or other, who had a very unfortunate haircut and even more unfortunate leadership skills. Harry had surmised that the older boy had gotten the prince title through an impressive amount of blackmail, which he could grudgingly respect.

Still though, he was a third year, and the prince role would need to be filled next year. Harry was already the most likely candidate, with the other first year boys either in his corner or too stupid to bother with (ie. Crabb and Goyle). The second years were also non-threats, only having about three boys among their ranks and all of them perfectly happy with staying out of his way.

The princess title however, would be much more difficult to steal. The current princess was a vicious second year named Mariya Vaisey, who had beat out the last princess by somehow bankrupting her fathers business. The poor girl had been removed from Hogwarts, and her family had moved to Bulgaria and enrolled her in Dumstrang.

Harry was broken from his musings by someone tapping his shoulder. Turning, Harry was met with Daphne Greengrass staring at him with an intense look.

“Heir Potter.”

“Heiress Greengrass.”

There was a moment of intense silence, in which Greengrass’ gaze got more and more intense, and Harry got more and more bored.

“Is there something that you need, Greengrass?”

She looked at him like it was obvious, “I would like to request your assistance in overtaking Parkinson and Vaisey for the title of Slytherin Princess.”

_ Well… isn't that convenient. _

“I suppose you believe I'll be the Prince?” 

She rolled her eyes, “You say that like it isn't obvious.”

He couldn't argue much with that, but he didn't want to discuss Slytherin Politics while people were milling about. He shared this with her, instead requesting that she wait a bloody moment for them to get on the train and into a private compartment. She ignored his jab and agreed promptly. Standing side by side as they waited for the train to arrive, they partook in tense smalltalk. Which was really just her grilling him for information while he dodged subtly.

“I heard whispers that Farley was going to approach you for an alliance, would you accept it?” she pressed, pretending like she was discussing house drama or something instead of a potential family alliance.

“Hmmm, the Farley’s aren't very impressive in terms of politics, but they’re all quite adept people.” He waltzed around the question with a practiced ease, bored with the conversation. He was getting hot under all the layers, preferring the cold anyway.

Several minutes passed of her hounding him, and him in return giving her an answer that revealed nothing. Just as he contemplating the pros and cons of throwing himself onto the tracks, the train finally arrived, and they boarded. Finding a compartment around the middle, he locked the door and shut the curtains. As an extra layer of caution, Harry threw up a bunch of temporary privacy wards, really not wanting to be seen conversing with the girl till he was sure she would be a beneficial ally.

“Those were impressive,” she remarked, eying his casting abilities with interest.

“My tutor taught them to me.” A lie, but what else was he to say?   
“So the rumor is true? You really do have a private tutor?” She seemed pleased that she managed to squeeze something out of him, even if it was unimportant and practically useless.

“Is this truly the conversation you want to be having right now? Because I’m happy to gossip if you’d prefer it.”

She blushed faintly, before schooling her features and becoming serious.

“I’ll cut to the chase, you're the only contender for Prince next year, and you probably wouldn't meet much opposition if you tried to topple Avery Urquhart right now.”

_ Riiiiight, that was his name. _

She continued, picking up pace as she got more confident, “Parkinson and I are currently fighting for the right to challenge Vaisey, but which is slow going, since there's only four girls in our year and the sides are even. I've been trying to get some of the second years to back me, but they're too afraid of Vaisey to change loyalties.”

It was well known that ruling with fear was more efficient than anything else in the house of snakes, since no self respecting Slytherin would bow to anyone unless their life was on the line, or they were fanatics.

“That's why I want your help, Vaisey is a little wary of you, and Urquhart is just enjoying his power while it lasts. You've got a lot of sway in Slytherin right now, even if you're not currently using it. If you were to back me, I could nudge Parkinson out of the running and have an easier time challenging Vaisey.”

It was a good analysis, very compelling. Her subtle stroking of his ego was pretty sneaky, but ineffective. He sat back and thought. Greengrass was a good contender for princess, all things considered. She was from a strong family, one that practically led the gray faction of the Wizengamot. Her great-great grandfather had made the families fortune in the trades business, and they got quite wealthy off of it.

The only issue he could find with her entire pitch was the simple fact that Vaisey was his favored Princess at the moment. He had only spoken to her in passing, not wanting to show his hand too soon, but everything pointed her to being the next Slytherin Queen. She was ruthless in a way he deeply admired, and her leadership tactics aligned perfectly with his. It wasn't that Greengrass was a bad candidate, but that Vaisey was better.

“I can help you get Parkinson out of the way, but I'm staying impartial in your fight against Vaisey.” He eventually answered, already planning the next few years in advance. Greengrass would no doubt take over in their third year, when Vaisey was a fourth year and no longer applicable for Princess, and he could get a good grasp of her abilities then. If he saw something he liked, he would campaign for King and Queen with her the next year. 

She seemed to accept this, happy to at least get  _ some _ backing. Really, if she was resourceful with it, she could use his influence to skyrocket her campaign, but that was only if she played her cards right.

“I want something from you first though.” he added, and she paled, which was kind of funny to him honestly. Did she really expect him to do all this for free?

“What is it? I’m afraid that if it pertains to my family I can't be of assistance, my father wouldn't allow it.”

“No, nothing like that.” he rubbed his cheek, thinking. He could ask a lot of things from her, and he certainly had some things that he needed that required a girl's help. Which one of his plans was more pressing though? Hard to say. 

He didn't necessarily need a girl to slip into Myrtle's bathroom for him anymore, since he had his invisibility cloak back. There was also a very special secret passage on the 6th floor that could only be opened by a girl, but he would probably have Farley help him with that, if he decides to go through with the alliance that is. There was also the issue of the Gryffindor girls' dorms, he couldn't get up there and he really needed to, but there was no telling if Greengrass would go that far for this. He could… yeah, that would work.

“I need you to go into the Forbidden Forest and ask a Unicorn for a lock of its hair.”

Her eyes bulged, “What!” she squeaked, her manners failing her.

“They only like girls, and getting unicorn hair off the market means it was just shed off, and I need some that was willingly given.”

She fretted. The Forbidden Forest was a dangerous place, and there was no guarantee that she’d find a unicorn on her first trip. 

“Only if you come into the forest with me.” she finally replied.  _ Not happening.  _ Something bad always happened to him in those thrice-damned woods. After he had quite literally died in there, he was very unenthusiastic about waltzing back in.

“You doubt your abilities to find a large equine with a horn so heavily that you need my help in the matter?” It was a manipulation tactic, obviously, but he would sooner kiss Dumbldore’s ass than willingly go into the forest.

“I'm not a fool!” _ Pity. _ “That place is a death trap, there's no way a first year could survive a run in with anything in those woods.”

He had been hoping the girls survival instincts wouldn't be that great, but at least she was smart.

He leaned farther back in his seat, mulling over his options. Farley would be much more efficient in getting the unicorn hair, and being a prefect allowed her some leniency when out after curfew. Having Greengrass help him with the secret passage wasn't ideal, but it should work fine. He still doubted the girl would be willing to break into another houses common room, so he would have to find some other way to do that.

“Fine, you don't have to go into the forest, but I’ll need your help with something else.” He was disappointed really, he needed the hair for a project of his that had been in the planning stages since he was five, and he couldn't even start till he got his hands on some.

“Okay… what is it?” she appeared relieved, he honestly couldn't blame her.

“There's a secret passage on the 6th floor that can only be opened by a girl, and I need to get in. Are you willing to help with that?” 

She audibly sighed with relief, “yes, I'd be happy to.”

“Pleasure working with you, Heiress Greengrass.”

They shook on it.

* * *

The rest of the train ride was quiet, he kept up the privacy wards till the train stopped. Greengrass was a chatterbox once she got going, and they stepped off together, discussing their teachers in a depressingly normal conversation.

“Professor Snape is an excellent potions master, I never meant to say he wasn’t,” Greengrass had very strong opinions on the man, “but he should never be allowed to teach, he hates children and It's painfully obvious.”

He was nodding along, mind numbingly bored “I believe he has an indefinite contract, and Dumbledore vouched for him after the war, so anything short of death probably wouldn't get him removed.”

Funnily enough, in Harry's last life that's exactly what happened.

She didn't know that though, and huffed indignantly, “That shouldn't matter! He is an awful teacher and needs to be fired!”

He snickered quietly, “You sounded a lot like Granger just now.”

Greengrass froze, a look of horror dawning on her face, “oh merlin…I did, didn't I.”

“Harry!”

Upon hearing the familiar voice, the boy in question suddenly wasn't bored anymore. He whipped around, taking in the sight of his best friend running full tilt down the path towards them.

“Ello Draco, how was your Christmas?”

The blonde stumbled to a stop in front of them, putting his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. Behind him, Theo was making his way slowly from the train, head buried in a book. Shocking.

“You git! Where were you on the train? Me and Theo searched the entire bloody thing twice!”

_ Oh… right. _ “Sorry mate, Greengrass and I were having a discussion and I had put up some privacy wards.”

“Greengrass?” Draco turned slightly, eyes landing on the girl next to him, who was still coming to terms with her Granger-ness.

“Oh…” Draco got a pinched expression on his face, “how are you, Heiress Greengrass?” his tone was cold, void of any emotion.

She shook herself from the identity crisis, “I am well, Heir Malfoy, thank you for asking,” she puffed up a little, glaring at him testingly.

“What were you and Harry discussing?”

_ What is this, a god damned inquisition? _

“Nothing that concerns you, I'm sure.”

_ Ah, childhood rivalry perhaps? _

“Oh please Greengrass, you can't expect me to believe anything you have to say is important, can you?

_ Yea ok, I'm out. _

Harry snuck away from the conversation, not wanting to stick around and watch the two glare each other down. Making his way to Theo, who was still slowly walking up the trail, Harry noticed that the book he was reading was Fellowship of the Ring.

“Enjoying the book there, Theo?”

The other boy didn't even look up from the book, replying with the monotone voice of a food critic who was not impressed, “Half of the creatures in this book don’t exist, and the wizard Gandalf is a joke, the word elf is spelt wrong and the species is tall and attractive for some reason, and the ring is a extremely boring artifact. Other than that, I suppose it's fine.”

_Everyone's_ _ a critic. _

Theo looked up suddenly, narrowing his eyes at him. The boy’s gaze roamed Harry's face before settling on his eyes. He remembered Death doing the exact same thing just a week prior, and felt blood run cold.

“Harry… did something happen over the holidays?” Theo asked him, worried.

**_Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum_ **

**He was screaming now, he was sure of it, the burning was unbearable, and oh god that** **_screeching_ ** **what** **_is that._ **

**“Harry.”**

**He couldn't think or feel or hear anything but that god awful** **_noise._ ** **He almost wished that the chanting was back,** **_anything_ ** **besides this.**

**“Harry, I'm sorry.”**

**_Pleasestopstopimsorrypleasestop._ **

**“I'm going to help. Ok?”**

**He screamed even louder, fighting to keep his sanity as the horrible screeching raised its pitch as well.**

**“Harry. Harry, I'm sorry but you need to eat this, it’ll help.”**

**_Pleasepleasestop-oh god is that ME?!_ **

**Someone grabbed his face, roughly shoving something warm down his throat. The screeching cut off as he bit down.**

**That** **_was_ ** **me.**

“Not that I can think of, why do you ask?”

Theo eyed him carefully, “Hm, nevermind. Did you like the book I sent you?”

Harry was getting whiplash with these topic changes, “I haven't gotten the chance to read it I’m afraid, but it looks quite interesting.”

That seemed to please the other boy, who nodded jerkily and went back to his book. They stood quietly for a few minutes, Harry was enjoying the weather, but was getting bored with all the standing around.

“Do you want to start heading up to the castle?” Harry asked him.

The other boy nodded, and started moving. They didn't get more than a few feet before they heard the distinct sound of Draco yelling,  _ “Piss off!” _

Looking farther up the trail, Harry got a good look at what appeared to be the end of an argument, with Greengrass storming off to the castle in a huff, and Draco standing there fuming.

“You alright there, mate?” He yelled, wondering what could have escalated the argument to the point that the blonde would curse.

“Fine.” He shouted back, he didn't look fine, “that Greengrass chit is a spoilt brat, thinking she’ll get everything she wants no matter what.”

Harry didn't press him, there was obviously bad blood between the two.

Making their way towards him, Harry contemplated how to approach this situation.

Draco turned to him, eyes blazing, “What did you need to talk to her about that was  _ so important  _ you had to spend the entire bloody train ride with her?” The blonde was clearly hurt, Harry didn't really know what to do about it, so he answered honestly.

“Well, she’ll probably be Slytherin Princess in our third year, so I was making sure she was at least somewhat competent.”

Draco only got more upset at this, turning quickly and storming up to the castle.

_ Well, bugger. _

“You know how the prince and princess or king and queen usually end up dating at some point?” Theo spoke up, Harry turned to him with a questioning look.

“Yea, so?”

The other boy raised an eyebrow. Harry was still lost, it wasn't like he was planning on dating Greengrass, or Vaisey for that matter. Not only did he have a still unknown soulmate, but the girl was boring, and Vaisey was more of a useful tool for enacting chaos than a romantic or even platonic partner.

When he told Theo this, the other boy rolled his eyes and started trekking back to the castle, ignoring Harry's demands to explain himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah drama, you warm my cold and shriveled heart.  
> I would like to point out: Theo is unnaturally insightful, so much so that he could tell something happened just by looking at Harrys eyes. Does this mean that Theo has some sort of gift, or is there something about Harry's eyes that he's picking up on? Food for thought.


	16. Saturn is Bright Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco Malfoy is quick to forgive Harry when he comes upon a worrying plot against him.  
> Blaise Zabini follows quietly after two tricksters.  
> Tom takes a nighttime walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of different POV's in this chapter, you have been warned.

Draco didn't know why he was so angry. Well, actually yes he did, but Greengrass always made him angry. What he didn't know was why Harry had made him even more angry!

He huffed, storming through the castle, deciding to hide in the one place he could be assured Harry wouldn't go. Stomping through the tall arched doorway, Madam Pince shushed him angrily. He made a rude gesture in her direction, running off before she could reprimand him.

Draco was hiding in the library, sulking. He still hasn't come up with a good enough reason to be mad at Harry, and refused to leave till he did. Walking along through the shelves, he reflected on his yuletide holiday. Harry had gotten him some strange balms, with a note attached saying they were muggle made. The other boy had also sent some cufflinks, which Draco enjoyed much more than the strange-smelling muggle paste. Blaise had sent him pornography, again, which his mother confiscated with a laugh. Theo had gifted him a large tomb of every magical creature known to man, for some reason. His father had become unnaturally pale, and had hurried off to write Nott Sr. a letter. Draco didn't know why that gift warranted a letter to the boy's Grandfather, perhaps it was extremely valuable or dark?

His mother had kissed his head gently and said he would be told eventually, which only confused him further. To avoid his pressing, she had handed him her gift, which was a beautiful cloak made of thick black wool. After his father had returned, he gave Draco his, which was a set of golden bands with runes etched on them, “to help with your back pain”. Draco put them on quickly, excited to feel their effects. It was strange, he had started getting sharp stabs of pain in the area of his shoulder blades almost constantly after his eleventh birthday. It kept him up some nights, but he had only told his parents about it, not wanting to worry his friends. His father had assured him it was hereditary, easing his fears, “I was the same at your age. Don't worry, I’ll commission something that will help ease the pain.”

He was broken out of his thoughts by the sound of two people talking quietly.

_ Is that Granger and Weasley? _

Leaning his ear to the shelf next to him, Draco eavesdropped on a very worrying conversation.

_ “I don't know about this, Mione. Seems kinda sketchy.” _

_ “Dumbledore wants us to get closer to him right? But talking to him with those Slytherins around isn't working, right?” _

_ “Well yeah, but this seems like it's breaking a lot of rules-” _

_ “I. Don't. Care!”  _ There was a sound like a book slamming shut, and a person storming off. Draco waited a moment, holding his breath. Another pair of feet followed quickly after the first, and then it was quiet. 

Walking around the shelf, Draco was greeted by a mess of parchment and books laying haphazardly across a table. Thinking quickly, he grabbed up all the parchment with writing on it and ran out of there, getting yelled at by Pince a second time.

_ Probably should avoid the library for a few weeks. _

Sprinting faster, he got into the Slytherin common room in record time. He wasn't sure, but it sounded like the two Gryffindors were planning on doing something very against the rules, and he wanted to figure out just what it was.

* * *

Sitting down on his bed, Draco spread the parchment out and started reading, his eyebrows slowly rising as he went.

_ That mudblood is absolutely mad! _

Thinking fast, Draco gathered up the parchment again and ran out of the dorms, down into the common room. He was planning on hunting Harry down and showing him what he had found, momentarily putting aside his confusing anger to warn his friend.

Bolting out of the common room, Draco ran right into someone else, them both falling to the floor in a heap.

* * *

Harry had been minding his own damn business, walking to the common room to get unpacked when someone ran full tilt into his chest, sending them both tumbling to the floor. Theo was shitting himself with laughter, the ponce. 

“Bloody hell..” he groaned, trying to sit up as the madman who had decided to MMA full body slam him to the floor started to frantically pick up their parchment.

_ Wait a minute.. _

He knew that madman, “Draco?”

“Harry! Perfect, look I get that I'm supposed to be mad at you right now but-hold on” he shuffled all the parchment into an unorganized stack and held them up proudly, "I stole these from Granger and Weasley! You really need to read them, that mudblood is completely off her rocker.”

Harry took the stack of parchment with a confused look, “Uhhhh… lets go to our dorm?”

Draco’s head bobbed, and Harry was reminded once more of the other boy's bird-like tendencies.

“Right uhh, shall we? You can come too Theo.” the bookworm nodded, still snickering, and the group made their way back into the commons and up into the dorms.

Settling down on the open space on the floor, the other two boys started pouring over the parchment while Draco explained how he had found them.

“-and of course once they had left I went over to investigate, and I'm glad I did! Weasel had said that this plan of theirs could be against school rules, but I'm quite sure it's illegal as well.” 

“They were planning on kidnapping me?” Harry questioned, perplexed. He wondered, not for the first time, if Granger had some sort of irrationality compulsion on her.

“Yes! So from what I could gather they were planning on using polyjuice to turn into me and Blaise, though how they were going to get hair from Blaise was anyone's guess, considering his head’s shaved, but whatever. Then they were going to lure you into an abandoned classroom and knock you out! I don't really know how that would have made you like them, though.”

It seemed that Granger had an inclination towards polyjuice in both lives.   
“Maybe they were planning on leaving and coming back in once the polyjuice wore off, pretending to rescue him or something? Since they would look like you two when he gets kidnapped, they were probably hoping Harry would distance himself from Slytherin house and stick around them instead.” Theo supplied a decent hypothesis. It had the makings of a solid plan, and could have probably worked on a seven year old, or a muggle. Neither of them were phenomenal actors though, and it was overall an impressively stupid plan.

The three boys sat and thought about what to do next, Harry was thinking that he should really just jump the gun and kill the little fuckers. Theo was thinking similar thoughts, but neither of the two boys voiced their opinions. Draco wanted to prank them, apparently.

Harry and Theo shared a look. Pranking wasn't really all that appealing to them, but Draco seemed adamant about it. Shrugging, the other two listened to his genius plan with amusement.

* * *

Somewhere in the castle, Blaise Zabini was stirring up trouble. Darting through the halls, he chased after the terror twins of Gryffindor. They didn't know he was following them though, that was kinda the point.

He smirked, maneuvering behind a pillar as they slipped into a classroom on the other side of the hall. Blaise had been following the two for the entire break, with Thasin as a trusty companion. For some reason, they kept going into the same abandoned classroom, staying there for hours on end. He had tried to get in, but it was warded in some way, and half a year of magical knowledge wouldn’t get it open.

He smirked wider, but there was one person he knew that could blast through that door in seconds.

_ I can't wait to tell Harry about this. _

The Hogwarts Express was bringing back the students who had gone home for the holidays, and with them was Harry I-have-a-crazy-tutor-who-teaches-me-advanced-magic Potter. Blaise couldn't get into that door on his own sure, but there had to be something in Harry's arsenal that could.

He snuck closer to the door, moving slowly. He had no way of knowing just what the twins had put up around the door as defense, and the last two weeks had been a constant battle between his curiosity, and unwillingness to be jinxed black and blue (quite literally, in this case). He halted suddenly, as the door knob started to jiggle. Thinking quickly, he bolted, deciding that he’ll come back tomorrow with Harry and the others, hopefully at a time when the twin terrors weren't anywhere nearby.

* * *

After the feast that evening, the four Slytherin boys retreated to their shared dorm. Theo had been unfortunately paired with Crabb and Goyle, who both snored something awful, so he had decided to not bother with it and bunk with them that night. They relaxed in each other's company for the rest of the day. Blaise and Draco were playing an aggressive game of exploding snap on the floor, and Theo was reading quietly on Blaise’s bed. Harry was also reading on his bed, finally deciding to start on the creature encyclopedia Theo had gotten him for Christmas. It was  _ very  _ slow going.

_ At this rate I'll get to the T’s by Christmas next year!  _ He thought glumly. For a few moments he considered just flipping through it, skimming, but thought better of it. If he was going to figure out what he was, he would need to read through the whole thing carefully.

Focusing back onto the book, (He was in the Am- words now) he read the next creature synopsis.

**Ammit- Egyptian**

**The Ammit is believed by muggles to be an Egyptian goddess, but is in actuality a chimera. With a body that was part lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile—the three largest man-eating animals known in Egypt, the Ammit imposes a terrifying figure. The Ammit is well known for not being overly picky with its food, but preferring hearts to all other meat. Also known as: "Devourer of the Dead", "Eater of Hearts", and "Great of Death”.**

Some of it fit into his symptoms, but Harry felt that whatever his creature was, it lived in a snowy area, and the deserts of Egypt just didn't seem right to him. Harry kept reading, only stopping once the other boys started to snuff out the candles. Crawling under his covers, creatures swarmed his mind, none feeling quite right enough. He fell into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Tom Riddle was moving swiftly through the Forbidden Forest that night, long cloak obstructing his features from anyone who might come along. He had been taking control of Harry while he slept for most of the school year, needing the cover of night to do most of his work. Shifting through the trees, Tom jumped fallen logs and sidestepped traps, the centaurs had nearly got him when he last stepped in the forest. He would be more careful tonight.

He came upon, quite suddenly, a large rock covered in runes. It was perfectly smooth, an egg shape, and a good ten feet in height. It pulsed softly with magic.

_ The ward stone. _

He moved quickly on, veering left at the ward stone, he moved swiftly through the underbrush, pausing quickly to place a small pouch on the ground, before moving on again. He had been placing the hex bags in a large circle around the Hogwarts grounds for a good three months, and it was a true testament to the centaurs loyalties that they continuously tried to capture him, but left the bags where they lay. 

An hour or two later, all the bags he had on him had been placed. He could only make so many each night, and it was getting rather cumbersome. It would all be worth it in the end though, even if the full circle ended up taking the rest of the school year to complete.

He started to retrace his steps, heading back to the castle. While he was walking, Tom reflected on the last several months. After his last conversation with Fate, he had gone and talked to the other horcruxes, trying to wear them down. When he wasn't sleeping or placing hex bags that was what he was doing. He had made a few trips to the kitchens as well as the owlery. Sending the Weasley twins that letter was a good call, and had helped Harry’s plans immensely.

There had been a few weeks that he had been sure he was going to get caught out at night, and there had definitely been a few close calls, but he managed. Getting a cursed necklace into the school had been  _ difficult, _ and sneaking it onto the Granger girl was even harder, but the little genius needed to be taken down a few pegs, and a necklace cursed with irrationality was the perfect thing for it. 

He smirked, it had been more effective than he could ever had hoped. The best part of the curse was, of course, that the wearer was so irrational that they would refuse to take the thing off, even if someone told them to their face that the thing was cursed.

He was sure it wouldn't last forever of course, Dumbledore was bound to figure it out at some point and force the necklace off of her. For now though, it was enough, Harry needed time to grow into his body and eventually take on the first transformation of his creature inheritance, having the girl constantly coming up with  _ good  _ plans to control him would only make things that much harder for the boy.

Tom frowned, he had no idea what Death had been thinking, letting Harry run off and eat human meat at such a young age, and before his inheritance had really started yet too! He grimaced, the cannibalism had triggered the poor boy's inheritance into acting up sooner than usual, which was a  _ huge  _ problem at this stage of Harry's development. Yes, the Potter heir was very tall for his age, but in comparison to where he needs to be when his inheritance becomes fully realized on his 13th birthday, he was still much too small. His body and mind were simply unable to handle the rapid alterations to his DNA and bone structure. Hopefully the problem was fixed now though, Harry’s episode in the forest had been a close call, the creature had almost taken control of him. Tom thought back to the horror he had felt, trapped in the boy's mind while it was on the brink of collapse. If Death hadn’t intervened when he did… who knows what would have happened to the two of them.

Tom was shaken from his thoughts when he was grabbed roughly by the scruff of his neck.

_ Shit shit shit you IDIOT. _

All he could make out was the legs of a horse before everything went black.

* * *

Harry woke up a few hours later, tied to the trunk of a tree and  _ extremely  _ confused. How had he even gotten out in-

“Oh bloody hell you have got to be fucking kidding me-”

He started furiously struggling in his bonds.

_ Stupid fucking forbidden forest! Why the hell cant I go a single BLOODY year at Hogwarts without almost dying in this place! _

“Hello Harry Potter.”

Whipping his head up, Harry spotted a creature standing halfway into the shadows, a bow strapped to his back and strong hooves pawing the dirt, and let out a low sigh, “Bane.”

“You know of me. Good, the stars did not lie.”

_ Not this tool again. _

“Look Bane, I don't know how I got out here but-”

“Saturn is bright tonight. Your fathers death is distant, but not distant enough. Karma has delayed but will not deny, school is paramount. Tell me, boy, do your eyes ever burn?”

Harry froze, trying to make sense of the centaur’s words. 

“My father is dead.”

“A father who did not raise you is no father at all.”

_ Ok what the fuck? _

“Look.” He struggled a bit more, “I get you divination wackadoodles really love speaking in riddles, but I don't have the energy to decode all that, so do you mind throwing me a bone and saying it straight for once?”

Bane smiled, and moved forward. Kneeling down, he cut Harry free of the bonds that held him.

“I'm afraid not, Son of Darkness. Worry not though, events cannot be altered regardless of your prior knowledge. Fate is steadfast in her decisions. She will not be swayed again.”

And then he was gone, galloping off into the forest.

* * *

Harry had to sneak back into the castle, sweaty and very confused. The centaur’s words made no sense to him right now, but he had been much more focused on getting out of the forest and into the dorms without getting caught or dying to really think about it. He crept into his dorm, trying not to wake anyone, and grabbed a fresh pair of pajamas. On his way out, he tripped over his own feet, tumbling to the floor. Luckily, the soft shag carpet not only padded his landing, but muffled the noise. He scrambled up, embarrassed, and moved more carefully out of the dorm.

After a quick shower, Harry jolted down the Centaur’s words on a scrap piece of parchment, and climbed into bed. He laid down and settled, looking up at the ceiling, contemplating. He didn't know how he had gotten out into the forbidden forest, he doubted the centaur had waltzed into his dorm and nabbed him, so what had happened? 

Harry eventually fell back into an uneasy sleep, unknowing of the sulking dark lord in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to call this my "plot points that need deeper clarification without actually revealing anything groundbreaking to the readers" chapter. Ie. the 'what the fuck is going on' chapter.  
> Feel free to share any theories you may have about Bane's prediction, but I will keep to my promise to not spoil a surprise and not confirm or deny any one hypothesis.


	17. A Mirror, a Prank, and an Artifact.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter and Blaise Zabini find a very familiar mirror.  
> Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger drink polyjuice.  
> Dumbledore receives a package.

Early the next morning, Harry was shook awake by a very excited Blaise, who whispered to get dressed quickly and follow him. Bleary, rubbing his eyes, Harry went through the motions of putting on a thin jumper and some slacks. He was tying the laces on his trainers when Blaise came back in and stage whispered to hurry the hell up. Dragging himself out of his desk chair, Harry meandered along behind Blaise, who was wide awake and seeming very excited.

“So over the holidays I had been following along behind the Weasley twins, who’ve been sneaking off to this one abandoned classroom-'' They walked out of the common room, Blaise with a skip in his step and Harry still half asleep. “I’ve been cautious to go near the door, cuz it's warded or something. I tried to get in once and found myself thrown out into the black lake!”

They had reached the ground floor, and Blaise started leading him through the halls. Harry hadn't said a word, brain too focused on trying to consciously sleepwalk to reply. 

Blaise chattered excitedly for the rest of the way, Harry slowly waking up as he talked. 

“-and here it is! Whadda you think?” Blaise presented him with a normal, slightly warded door.

“...what are we doing here, mate?” Harry hadn't been paying much attention to the whole thing, and had just now noticed his surroundings.

Blaise let out a long-suffering sigh, “Harry, the Weasley twins have been going into this room and staying inside for hours on end, I want to get in, but they've warded it and I don't know how to break through wards.”

“Ahh…… so why am I here?”

Another sigh.

“Please take the wards down for me.”

Harry looked blankly at the aforementioned door for several moments, seemingly studying it. Blaise started jumping on the balls of his feet out of excitement.

“I didn't bring my wand with me.” Blaise was two seconds away from slapping him, losing his patience quickly.

“Didn't you even listen to me when I woke you up?”

Another blank look.

“Right, fine. I'll go grab it, stay here.”

Blaise ran back to the dorms to collect the elder wand, which was feeling very abandoned on Harry's desk.

While he was doing that, Harry sat down along the wall across from the door, studying it still. The wards weren’t set up by the Weasley twins, funnily enough. They weren't even wards meant to keep people out, they were just used to monitor who came in and out. Sure, the twins probably put up some prank wards when they were inside, but there wasn't anything to keep anyone out.

He blinked slowly, the magical signature on the wards was a little familiar. He lazily scrolled through a filing cabinet in his mindscape, trying to find the file on this particular magical signature.

 _Oh, here it is…. right, that's Dumbledore’s-_ harry bolted up, suddenly wide awake.

“That's Dumbledore's magical signature.”

“What, mate?”

Harry looked to his right, seeing Blaise making his way towards him. 

“I recognize the magical signature, it's not either of the Weasley twins’, its Dumbledore.”

Blaise cursed faintly, “how are the twins getting inside then?”

Harry got up off the floor, dusting off his pants.

“The only wards on the door right now are meant to record who goes through the door and when, you could have waltzed in at any time. If you encountered any other wards, they were probably placed while the twins were inside the room, right?” Blaise nodded, tan cheeks heating up in an embarrassed blush.

“They probably put those up, but if you had come here when they hadn't been inside the room, you could have gotten in just fine.” Blaise was blushing further now, realizing he had wasted most of the Christmas break on this.

”I'm glad you hadn't though, Dumbledore would have known you had visited this room, who knows what the old goat would have done with that information.” Blaise was confused with the boy's words, he had no idea that Harry didn't like Dumbledore.

“So what should we do?” he finally asked, breaking Harry out of his stupor.

“I can break the wards, but Dumbledore would notice pretty quickly. I'd say we would have roughly ten minutes after the wards go down for him to notice, and another ten or so till he shows up.”

Blaise nodded along, “Alright, we’ll peek in quickly then get the ‘ell out as fast as possible.”

Harry agreed, and started peeling back the wards... they smelled like lemon. It only took him a few moments really, they were rather simple wards after all.

Once they were down, he motioned to Blaise, and they both moved forward and burst through the door.

“A mirror?”

Harry froze, the only thing in the room was a large, ornate mirror propped up on the far wall.

_The Mirror of Erised? What is it doing still at the castle?_

Blaise was walking quickly towards the mirror, and Harry didn't have time to call out to him before he was already in front of it.

“What the-” Blaise stumbled back, falling on his ass.

“Blaise, get away from that thing!” Harry was rooted at the spot, he wanted to go over and grab Blaise, but he didn't want to get even a glimpse of the mirror. He had no idea what would be in it, and he didn't want to find out.

“Harry… Harry, what is this thing?!” Blaise was still on the floor, staring unblinking at the mirror.

“What are you seeing? Blaise?”

“My… my father.”

That made sense, Blaise’s father had been Mrs. Zabini’s first husband, and from what the boy had said about him, was the only one of her husbands that the woman had actually loved.

“It's the Mirror of Erised Blaise, he isn't really there.”

The other boy didn't reply, seemingly transfixed on the mirror.

“Blaise! He's dead, get off your ass and let's leave!” Harry was getting nervous now, not only was Blaise transfixed on the mirror, but the headmaster was bound to notice the wards had broken and hurry over, catching them.

“Blaise! Get over here, now!”

Nothing. The Zabini heir was lost to him. Gritting his teeth, Harry marched over to the boy, determinately NOT looking at the mirror. Upon reaching Blaise, he hauled the shorter boy to his feet, and started pulling him towards the exit. He stumbled, as Blaise tugged towards the mirror, determined to keep looking in. Harry moved backwards a few paces, getting a glimpse of long fingers with sharp, sharp claws in the mirror. He looked away quickly, hauling Blaise along with more force.

He pulled Blaise from the room, and shut the door. He didn't stop dragging the other boy till they had reached the common room. 

After hissing the password, Harry stormed in, throwing Blaise onto one of the plush couches. He took a deep breath, before plopping down in the adjacent loveseat, rubbing his cheek tiredly.

“I’m sorry, Harry.” Blaise had the decency to look sheepish.

“Listen here Zabini, you're not going to go anywhere near that mirror again, understood?” Blaise nodded fast, “-and you are to tell _absolutely no one about it,_ especially Draco, understand?”

Another nod.

Harry relaxed, breathing out through his teeth, “that mirror is a dangerous mate, people have wasted away in front of it.”

“I know, sorry.”

Harry rolled his shoulder in the weak imitation of a shrug, “‘s alright, as long as you don't go near it again.”

By the time Draco and Theo had come down to the commons, the other two were deeply engrossed in their fifth chess game of the morning.

* * *

Winter turned into Spring, and April came and passed without incident. Since Quirrell wasn’t possessed, he didn't trade Hagrid a dragon egg for information on Fluffy, who had been moved to a reserve somewhere in America, much to the half-giants destress.

Harry and Co. didn't see any hints of the Gryffindor spies attempting to kidnap him like the stolen parchment had detailed, and Draco was a little disappointed that he couldn't prank the two back. May started to creep around the bend, end of year exams looming ever closer when the two finally struck.

Harry had been walking alone in the early morning, missing the cool weather of winter, when Draco and Theo had rounded the corner unexpectedly. A few things automatically made him cautious, the first thing was that Draco's hair was a mess, and had literally NO product in it. Draco refused to step foot into the _common room_ without any product in his hair, and now he was just waltzing around Hogwarts with his hair free of anything? Not only that, but Theo didn't have a book on him, enough said.

“Hey mate!” the Draco imposter shouted out, Harry's instincts were _screaming._

Draco felt all wrong, he even _smelt_ different. Harry had an intense urge to turn tail and find the real Draco _immediately._

“Hello. How are you?” he ground out, wishing that he could skin the person in front of him alive. _Stop wearing Draco’s face you piece of_ **_trash._ **

The fake Draco and Theo proceeded to talk his ears off about random, inconsequential things, all the while leading him to a secluded classroom. Harry was a little relieved, knowing that this must be Granger and Weasley finally going through with their stupid kidnapping scheme. He had been nervous about doing anything to the fakes until he was sure he could take them on, but those two were just first years, the only offensive spell they knew was the severing charm, or maybe the jelly-legs jinx.

He walked quickly into the abandoned classroom, standing stock stiff in the middle, waiting for the other two to close the door. Once he heard the lock turning, he whipped around and shot off two stunners, hitting both of them, and they collapsed to the floor.

Taking a deep breath, he moved over to their prone forms, picking them up and roughly throwing them both to the middle of the room. Conjuring some rope, he tied them up , taking their wands.

He was just about to revive them, to have a few _words,_ when the lock on the door clicked open and two people stumbled into the room. He whipped around, pointing his wand at the intruders, a stupefy on his tongue.

“Harry! You alright mate?” he let out a relieved breath, pocketing his wand.

“I’m fine, Draco. What are you two doing?”

“Granger locked us in a broom closet!” Draco appeared very indignant about it. Theo didn't look like he particularly cared.

“That's awfully unfortunate for you two, would you like to get some revenge?”

Right on time, the two prone forms behind him reverted back into Granger and Weasley, still out cold. Draco took one look at them before cackling maniacally.

* * *

Several hours later, an obliviated Granger and Weasley woke up in the abandoned classroom. Confused, they meandered back to the Gryffindor common room, trying to remember what they had been doing in the classroom. Walking into the commons, they were met with uproarious laughter from the rest of the house. Granger's hair had been turned into a literal rats-nest, with real rats; and Weasley’s skin was green, his hair silver. They were both still wearing the stolen Slytherin uniforms.

* * *

The rest of the school year went by quickly, Granger and Weasley had been stuck in the infirmary for a few days after the prank, while Madam Pomfrey ran through different methods to get them back to normal. End of year exams went much the same way that midterms did, with Harry in first for the year, Granger as a close second. 

Harry had gotten into the Ca- creatures in the book, and had yet to find anything that called to him, or matched up with his symptoms.

The end of term feast was a delightful affair, with food piled high with savory foods. The tables groaning under the weight of it all. Harry didn't pay much attention to Dumbledore’s speech, and only clapped politely as Ravenclaw won the house cup. He was ready to get back to Privet Drive. Hogwarts always had a stressful undertone, having Dumbledore and his cronies constantly watching him made the boy quite stressed. He was conflicted though, because while he wanted terribly to get away from the headmaster, he was anxious about not seeing his friends for three months. Draco especially, would be difficult to part with.

He sighed, the four of them were walking down to the Hogwarts express, Thasin hissing angrily in his ear. She wanted to stay at the castle, but he was worried one of the summer staff might come upon her at some point. 

They boarded the train, finding a empty compartment and settling down. Blaise and Draco were having an intense conversation about some exclusive clothing store in Italy they were planning on visiting. Theo was reading, naturally. Harry was staring out the window, grumpy and having no way to fix it.

This is how the first few hours of the train ride went, at least till Draco got bored and began throwing wads of parchment at Theo, who was looking increasingly irritated with the blonde. Harry smiled at this, and assisted his best friend in annoying the bookworm.

The ride ended far too soon after that, and the four boys stepping off the train.

“You'll all be writing to me, you hear?” Draco commanded, authoritative tone to his voice.

“Course.”

“Yea mate.”

“Hell no.”

Draco threw another wad of paper at Theo, who shouted and tried to block with his book.

Laughing, they all made their way to their respective guardians, waving goodbye to Harry as he passed through the barrier.

“Summer here I come…”

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was sitting in the headmasters office after the end of term feast. All the students had left Hogwarts, and he needed to start working to fix a few issues he had with the boy-who-lived. That was all put to the side for now though, he had just received a very special package. Smiling, he pulled an object out of its protective wrapping. Holding said object up to the light, he studied it carefully, looking for imperfections in the design. Finding none, he set it down on his desk.

_Perfect._

**End of Year One.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of first year! The votes have been overwelmingly option 3, so the next two days are only going to have two updates, both drawings of the main four. Thank you all for your support in this project! you've all been amazing.


	18. Second Year Character References

I think its probably obvious that Theo's books and the symbols next to each of their names are hints to what goes on in this year ;)

Ps. I've gifted you with smiling Harry because this is the most chill year by far (I have dubbed it: the before shit hits the fan year). I figured it would be nice to see harry happy before the absolute shit show that is third year. Savor it, dear reader, that smile will be gone soon enough.

(for reference, Theo is the average height for a 12-13 year old boy)

(yes I know Harry and Blaise look 14 I'm sorry its the angle of their heads I promise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now back to our regularly scheduled programing.


	19. The Summer Slump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter and Co. have very separate experiences during the summer. Harry is reading with a vengeance, Draco is having an awful lot of back pain, Blaise is rebelling against respectability, and Theo is keeping his eyes firmly shut for now.  
> Tom, I'm afraid, is in timeout.

**Year Two: The Scholars**

Harry Potter realized within the first hour of being back at Privet Drive that Dobby existed. This realization wouldn't usually make him so pissed off, but the knowledge that Dobby the Barmy House-elf would no doubt be stopping his mail this summer made him briefly consider killing the little bastard the first chance he got. Sighing, Harry penned a quick letter to Draco, before realizing belatedly that he didn't have a bloody owl, not feeling the need to get one when he already had a pet. This enraged him further, and he slumped moody in his desk chair. It was one thing going then entire summer without seeing his friends (read Draco) but not being able to write to them (Draco) was a different type of torture.

_Are you sure that Lucius will be planting the diary on the Weasley chit this year?_ Tom asked, sounding like he thought it was unlikely.

_Things may have changed yes, but not so much that he wouldn't want to get rid of a dark artifact like your first horcrux._

Tom was quiet for a moment, _normally I would agree with you, but considering it is no longer a horcrux-_

“WHAT!” Harry fell out of his chair, verbally shouting his surprise.

_And pray tell what the bloody buggering FUCK you mean by that, Riddle? Since when was the diary no longer a horcrux?”_

Tom was silent for a moment, trying to decide how to word it.

_I absorbed it._

_….You what?_

_I absorbed it, it's just a blank book now._

_And when, pray tell, did you absorb it, and how?_

It was quiet for a bit longer this time, Tom was mulling over the pros and cons of saying anything more, Harry was getting more and more pissed.

_I’m the main horcrux, naturally, so I can go visit the others. In 1983-_

**_YOU DID THIS WHEN I WAS THREE??? AND YOU DIDN'T BLOODY TELL ME!?_ **

_…………..Yes._

_Fuck you, Riddle._

Harry slammed the door that separated their minds shut, trapping Tom in his own mindscape, decidedly in timeout. He was so incredibly pissed off by the past thirty minutes that he threw all caution to the wind and yelled, “Dobby! Get your ass out here.” Figuring that he would at least feel better by yelling.

The sound of a pop alerted him to Dobby's prompt arrival, and an the poor elf (that was already scared shitless) was grabbed firmly around the neck and slammed into a wall.

Harry leaned in close and whispered, “Listen here you psychotic little _shit,_ anything that your man-whore of a master is planning to unleash onto Hogwarts will _pale_ in comparison to what I'll do to you if you even _think about_ disrupting my mail. Understood?” 

Dobby nodded fearfully and popped away.

Harry let out a long sigh, flopping down onto the floor and attempting to calm down. He knew it was wrong to take his anger out on the poor elf, but Tom had been keeping that secret for nearly a bloody _decade!_ He had the right to be pissed. 

Harry fell backwards onto the soft carpet with a sigh. Contemplating the last school year. His episodes with Pettigrew and in the forest had obviously been brought on by his budding creature inheritance, as well as all the early mornings staring blankly at a mirror. After his breakdown in the forest however, he felt much the same as he had before he ate Pettigrew. It seemed as though Death had done something to stunt his creature inheritance, as even the telltale signs of one seemed almost non-existent. Sure, he still had to drain a few pets at Hogwarts of blood to negate any withdrawal symptoms, but blood drinking tied into his necromancy as well, and could be excused as something pertaining to that particular skill of his.

_Whatever, it's not like Death would tell me what he did._

* * *

The summer passed quietly for Harry, who corresponded via owl with his friends, and relaxed at home with the Dursleys. The same could not be said for Draco, who’s back pain had gotten considerably worse after his 12th birthday, and he had noticed that the areas in pain were also noticeably inflamed. His mother had rubbed some balm on his back that had helped some, promising that this was perfectly normal for a Malfoy, but he couldn't help but feeling that this was extremely _abnormal_ . He constantly felt like something was going to grow out of his back, and his nails grew in thick and fast; he had taken to trimming them once a week at _least,_ sometimes once every few days. He also noticed, with no small amount of bitterness, that he was still short for his age, and not growing much taller. Harry was already almost a head taller than him, and the others weren't terribly far behind that.

Draco sighed, it was currently the 30th of July, and he was putting the finishing touches on Harry’s birthday present. Lifting it up for his owl, Persephone, to take, he wondered suddenly when they were all going to meet up to go school shopping. 

The Hogwarts letters had arrived on the 25th of July, and Blaise had wrote that he would be back from visiting his extended family in Italy on the 3rd of August, and that he could meet them sometime after that. Theo wasn't set to get back from Switzerland till the 6th, so they would have to wait till after then. Draco entertained the thought of them meeting up without Theo, but didn’t want to leave out one of his friends. 

_It'll have to be the 7th,_ he decided with a nod. The 7th of August was also a Friday, which was when his father had tea with the minister, so his mother would have to take them. He considered this to be a good thing, as his mother had a much better time being kind to other people than his father did, who he took after in the subtle (or not so subtle) insulting of people he didn't like. 

Finally deciding that was the best course of action, he got out three pieces of parchment to write to his friends, sharing when he thought would be the best day and why. Sealing them with the Malfoy coat of arms, he wandered off to find his mothers owl, as Persephone was currently carrying Harry's birthday present to Surrey, wherever that was.

* * *

**Gwyllgi-Welsh**

**The Gwyllgi is described as a large wolf-dog, found predominantly in Wales, that has the appearance and stature similar to a Dire Wolf (see page 189) with baleful breath and blazing red eyes. It is often referred to as “The Dog of Darkness” or “The Black Hound of Destiny”. It often hunts human prey, appearing to them on lonely roads at night. It is quite similar to the Grim (see page 497) as it is also an omen of terrible and painful death.**

Harry breathed out a tired sigh, crossing the Gwyllgi out with his pencil. At first he had sniffed at the thought of marking up a precious resource like “Every Magical Creature Known”, but found himself needing to make some sort of physical progress in this long arduous journey of discovering his creature inheritance. 

He wondered, not for the first time, why Death seemed so adamant about not telling him, feeling that it was uncomfortably similar to Tom’s dodging of questions relating to his plans. The paranoid side of him figured that, much like Tom's plans, he would _really_ hate the knowledge of what he was, so Death was procrastinating the inevitable. The more cynical side of him figured Death didn't get much amusement in his life, and watching Harry struggle through this was the only amusement he got. 

Harry leaned back in his desk chair, contemplating. It was his birthday, and his family had shoved him upstairs with the command to stay there till his surprise-party-that-wasn't-a-surprise was all set up. This left him sulking in his bedroom, trying to do something productive but then getting distracted by all the mysteries currently in his life.

An indignant squawk broke him from his musing. Looking to the window, he recognized Draco's barn owl Persephone, flapping angrily at him, wanting to be let in. He quickly got up and unlatched the window, barely sidestepping the bird as it rocketed into the room. Persephone flew around the room, squawking all the while, before finally settling on his bed frame. She held out her leg and dropped a package onto the bed, before immediately flying back out the window.

_Well then._

Laughing a little at the birds aloofness, he meandered over to the package, picking it up and observing it. He didn't get the chance to open it however as two more owls streamed into the room, one that appeared to be Theo’s snowy owl Apollo, and one that was definitely Blaise’s eagle owl Hermes. It had been a fun day when they all sat down together and named all their owls after gods from Greek mythology. Harry was thinking of getting his own and naming it similarly, but couldn't settle on Hades or Thanatos for a name, wanting something death related. (there was also the issue that he couldn't yet part with the memory of Hedwig)

Gathering up all the presents, he gave the more mild mannered birds some water before they flew off. Setting the three packages onto his bed, he started to open them, deciding that his birthday party would be a purely family affair.

Blaise had sent him a book on clothing alteration charms, with a note that said if he kept growing the way he was that he would probably need them. He had also sent pornography, which was apparently something that he added to all his gifts. Harry set it aside for later. Theo had gotten him a book on soul bonds, making him wonder just how observant one boy could be before it veered off into unnatural. Draco had gotten him a masterly crafted glass snake sculpture, complete with emerald eyes. It was beautifully formed and obviously expensive, its pose coiled up lazily as if sleeping. Draco’s note revealed that he had had it commissioned by a glassblower in Sweden's famous “Glasriket” Glass Country, (from the magical district, naturally) and it had been embedded with unbreakable charms, as well as passive calming magic, meant to settle the mind.

The sculpture, despite being incredibly detailed, was only about a inch and a half tall, and would fit easily in his pockets. He clutched it, desperately, feeling the calming magic already starting to work its magic.

Harry slouched back in his chair, and sighed, completely and utterly relaxed.

Thirty minutes later, and with Draco's present firmly in his trouser pocket, he made his way down the stairs into his surprise-but-not-a-surprise party. It was a good day, all things considered. Aunt Petunia had baked him a treacle tart, his favorite, and they all ate a feast for dinner

“Harry dear you need to stop growing! You just turned twelve and you've almost caught up with me!” his aunt laughed, hugging him tightly and giving him a kiss on the head. The rest of the afternoon was merry, and Harry settled into bed that night with the snake sculpture held loosely in his grasp, Thasin curled up on his chest.

* * *

Blaise Zabini was in his family's library in Italy, browsing through the books filled with knowledge long lost to the rest of the world. He was impressively bored, being surrounded by a bunch of stuffy Italian mobsters did that to most people.

_They aren't even the interesting type of mobsters, they just deal in illegal potions and smoke cigars. Where's all the exciting duels in the streets and the sexy outfits?_

Blaise had a very skewed perception of what was important in this world.

Turning a corner, he felt the wood under his hand suddenly warm. Looking to the right, he found that his hand was on a symbol that had seemingly been carved into the wood. It was two snakes knotted together, and appeared Norse in nature. He felt called to it, and brushed his fingers over it a second time. The snakes started to shift then, untangling and slithering into a different formation, forming a small square shape in the wood. The square gave way, and fell forward, revealing a small hollowed out space behind it. Peering in, now decidedly _not_ bored, Blaise saw what appeared to be a small green book. Taking it out, he turned it over in his palm, admiring it. The book was mostly green, with intricate gold trimming that also appeared Norse, it was about the size of his hand.

“So, Loki has chosen you, eh boy?” He whipped around, finding his great great grandfather looking at the book in disapproval. “He isn't much a respectable god, you know, I expect you to choose differently. Run along then, find someone better.”

The old man hobbled off, apparently deciding that that was the only explanation necessary. Blaise felt insulted by the man's words, feeling that the trickster god was quite fitting for him really. Looking down once again at the book, he pocketed it, and placed the piece of wood that had fallen back into its proper place, where it proceeded to merge back with the original wood, and the two snakes knotted together again. Blaise made a beeline for the exit, already planning on going against his grandfather's words, whatever they had meant.

* * *

Theo was currently in Switzerland, really wishing he wasn't. Sure, the countryside was beautiful, and the magical district in Bern was filled to the brim with incredible things, but Theo wasn't enjoying any of it, as he was currently meeting with an old seer woman about his gift. After years of prodding on his grandfather's part, Theo had finally been dragged off to Switzerland to meet with this old crone who was supposedly adept in unlocking someone's inner eye. Theo had no idea what that could do to help him and his weird hunches, but it seemed to be helping his grandfather's stress.

The old woman was currently pottering around the kitchen, explaining how English wizards had gotten things _very wrong_ about divination and those with the sight, mostly because there were so few that were adept (and knowledgeable) in the practice currently living in the British Isles. She explained the difference between seers and prophets, where prophets are those who give prophecies (duh), and seers are those who have been given the gift of _seeing_ things that others cannot. It sounded to Theo like all the so-called seers in Britain were actually prophets, and the true seers were written off as loons.

The woman had finished her spiel and was now sitting down across from him, grabbing for his hands before holding them firmly. She started humming lowly, calling on something. The air in the room seemed to shift, and the smell of iron and earth overwhelmed his senses. His grandfather was standing in the corner of the room, watching the old woman imploringly. After several moments of this, her eyes flung open and she practically threw his hands away. Muttering to herself further, she got up and started moving around the room again, before coming back and setting on the seat across from him once more. She looked deep into his eyes, and started to speak.

“You've got a demon, boy, angel as well. Loki protects you but keeps distance. Your inner eye can not be opened by me. No one but yourself, I can do nothing for you.” She spoke in choppy, broken English, but he understood what she meant, they left the house on her prompting.

“We’ll find someone who can give us a clear answer, Theo. Bern is the divination capital of the world after all.” his grandfather spoke in a placating tone, more for himself than his grandson. Theo had already gotten a clear enough answer though, feeling that his inner eye would open once it was needed. He had a hunch about it happening this year, and his hunches were never wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its a shorter chapter than usual, but an important one. Tom wont be in timeout for the entire year, don't worry, but he's certainly going to be doing some groveling.  
> PS: Please give me group name ideas for the main four, I feel like they need one that isn't Harry and Co. which is kinda unimaginative.


	20. Dirty Blood Coats the Fists of Purity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter and Co. reunite in Diagon Alley, not before he has a sneaky little adventure down Knockturn though. It is revealed that Draco is still short.  
> The boys return to Hogwarts for their second year, heads held high and spirits strong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm begging for forgiveness for the last chapter which was quite short with this one, which is much longer. Hope you enjoy!

Harry made his way through the Leaky Cauldron, ignoring the blatant stares from everyone around him, his eyes zeroed in on the far back wall. He was here a few hours earlier than the others, wanting to sneak down Knockturn Alley and snoop. The last time he had been to Diagon Alley, Tom had told him in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't go gallivanting down Knockturn till he was at least thirty. Alas, Tom was in timeout right now and Harry would do as he damn well pleased.

He stepped into Diagon, quickly pulling up his hood to obscure his features. He didn't want to be caught down the less than stellar side-alley by anyone that would recognize him, it would damage his reputation. Speeding up to a fast stride, Harry walked purposefully down Diagon until he made it to Knockturn, not pausing for a second before going in. The alley wasn't all bad, really. Sure, in his last life he had been terrified, and obviously quite young, which had made him an easy target for unsavory people. This time though, he had already grown to the height of an average woman, and looked to be on the shorter side as men go, so his silhouette would be passed off as an adult, hopefully. Ok so this was a little risky, but Tom wasn’t here to tell him that.

Harry made his way down the alley slowly, mostly window shopping. He stopped though, quite abruptly, when he came across a stationary store of all things. Intrigued, he climbed the rickety steps and entered the shop, taking in all the enchanted quills and jinxed journals with interest. The shelves were a good three stories high, and seemed to be on the brink of collapsing into themselves. The shop-keep was pleasant enough, one of those live-and-let-live types, and had left him to browse.

Strolling through the high shelves, Harry felt drawn towards all the enchanted journals, which were masterfully crafted and quite illegal by the look of it. Finding a sign that listed all the possible enchantments that one could put on a custom journal, Harry found that many of the journal's main features were to keep others from getting in or reading the contents. One addition quickly caught his eye though: **Infinite pages: 400** **ʛ**

“Sir? What does it mean by infinite pages?” he motioned the shop-keep over to the sign, pointing.

“Ahhh good eye lad,” he spit, gross, “that ‘ere makes the pages never ending, so you never run outta ‘em”

Harry was intrigued by this, and eventually bought a black, silver embossed journal with the infinite pages enchantment and several jinxes to keep unwanted readers out. He figured once he wasn't angry at Tom anyone he could get the man to add further enchantments, but for now he was still incredibly cross with the ex-dark lord, so this would do just fine. He also thought to buy an enchanted quill meant to write for you, which he figured would be quite handy, remembering the blood quill and quick-quotes quills he had seen in his first life, there was no telling how many different types of quills there were that he didn't know about.

Making his way back up to the main alley, Harry felt quite satisfied with his purchases. It was one thing going down the obviously illegal and dangerous alley, but it was another thing entirely to actually buy something in it. His pre-teenage rebellion over and done with, Harry settled into Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor to wait for his friends. 

It was a good thirty minutes before Theo showed up, who was carrying a impressively large stack of books in his arms (naturally).

“Over here, mate.” He called out, “Draco’s gonna be awfully cross that you went and got the course books without us.”

Theo sat down with a sigh, “These are from the second hand bookshop down the way actually, and they’re for my personal reading pleasure, mind you.” Theo had apparently decided the Hogwarts library was too small a selection and sought to buy his own books that, from the size of the stack, would last him for the next few weeks.

“Flourish an’ Blott's is a madhouse, I tell you. Full of middle aged women swooning over some writer or another.” 

Theo looked glum about having to resort to a second hand bookstore for his book addiction, as if it was beneath him. They chatted for a while, before Blaise showed up, looking darker than normal from the Italian sun.

“Evenin' chaps.” Was his only greeting. He too, joined them at the table. 

It was several minutes later that Draco and Lady Malfoy breezed into the shop. Lady Malfoy looking fantastically beautiful and Draco fantastically short. Theo was the first to notice their arrival, and proceeded to snort tea up his nose, apparently finding the Malfoy heir's height particularly hysterical.

“”Ello-Theo stop laughing-sorry for being late, mother needed to change a third time-Theo stop laughing!”

Harry got up with a sigh, acknowledging distantly that he could only see the top of Draco's head. Theo laughed harder, Draco turned pink.

“I'll get my growth spurt, you'll see Nott, then you won't be laughing!”

This prompted Theo to make a passing remark about hobbits from Lord of the Rings. Which _did_ make Harry snort a bit, and prompted Draco to kick the Nott heir in the knee. Blaise watched the entire spectacle with amusement

“Alright boys enough of that.” An amused Lady Malfoy put a stop to the chaos, chiding Theo and Draco for fighting in such a public place, before pulling them all along to get their school supplies.

They first went to get stationary, Harry only getting more parchment and ink, already having gotten new quills. Draco had picked out a particularly beautiful peacock quill, which made Theo erupt into more peals of laughter right in the center of the store. Draco kicked him in the other knee.

Draco and Blaise took a few minutes to drool over the quidditch supply store, with Harry watching passively from behind them. Theo was crouched down on the path reading a book, wishing they would get a move on already.

Eventually they were dragged off to Flourish and Blotts, which did in fact have a rather large crowd of people inside of it. With Lady Malfoy leading the charge, the group pushed their way through. 

“It can't be Harry Potter.”

_I wonder if I can get away with killing a man in front of an entire bookstore._

There was no reply, as expected.

Harry watched with a detached feeling of acceptance as the one and only Gilderoy Lockhart parted the crowd, making his way to Harry. The tall boy sunk in his heels, and when the ponce in blue grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled, he didn't move an inch.

“Good evening sir, would you please remove your hand from my person.” Harry's voice was cold as ice, and Draco was peering up at the two from next to him with obvious glee on his face.

“Ah, um yes of course dear boy.” Lockhart let go with a nervous laugh, “Won't you come up with me to the stage, I'd love to get a few pictures with you.”

“I'm afraid I have to decline, sir.”

Another nervous laugh, “Nonsense my boy! Come on up, let's greet the crowd.”

Harry sunk his heels in further, and Lockhart was visibly trying to pull him along this time. Eventually the fraud settled on just standing right there in the crowd, wearing a big smile as the camera flashed.

Harry determinately ignored the man's speech, instead focusing on looking as miserable as physically possible, and making most of the crowd extremely uncomfortable with second hand embarrassment.

After he had 'The entire Gilderoy Lockhart Series' shoved into his arms, free of charge of course, Harry was commandeered by an irate Lady Malfoy, who proceeded to glare quite poshly at Lockhart while leading him and the other boys away.

“Honestly that man. I'm so sorry Heir Potter, some people these days have no class.” She soothed out the wrinkles in his jumper. 

“Please Lady Malfoy, call me Harry.”

The rest of the trip passed without incident, though Harry _had_ seen a gaggle of redheads meander into the bookstore shortly after they paid. Harry had ducked down to Draco’s level to tell him, when Theo erupted into another laughing fit. Apparently, Harry needing to stoop so low was an act of comedic genius, or Theo was just a bit of a tool. Either way, they got out of the store without having a run in with the Weasley family, which was good enough for him.

Their last stop had been Eeylops Owl Emporium, in which Blaise had to physically drag Harry into the store. It wasn't that he _didn’t_ want an owl, it's just that he missed Hedwig, and felt that he was cheating her by getting another. Thasin would also be extremely pissed off with “being replaced”. His friends were insistent however, and the group walked through the store, the other boys pointing out different owls and Harry refusing all of them stubbornly.

He noticed suddenly, a very large black owl with familiar gold and green eyes studying him from the back of the store. Laughing lightly, he moved over to it and held out his hand. The bird (that _totally_ wasn’t death in disguise) hopped regally onto his hand. How it managed to hop _regally_ was anyone's guess. Stroking its front feathers, Harry had the feeling that it wasn't Death after all, but had certainly been made by the god, he could feel the death magic as he brushed lightly through the owl’s feathers. Figuring it was the best he could get, he paid for the bird and a cage, already having some owl treats at home that he had been using to placate the aggressive Persephone.

HIs friends were satisfied he finally had a means of communication, and he was satisfied that they could finally leave the loud store. Relocating to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch, they all caught up and traded stories from their summer, Lady Malfoy butting in with embarrassing stories from Draco's childhood, much to the small boys mortification and Theo’s glee. Promising to meet back up on the train, “Last compartment on the left, you can't miss it,” Harry and his friends parted ways. It had felt good to see them all again, and the look of resigned exasperation on Vernon’s face when he saw Harry’s new owl made the entire purchase worth it.

* * *

The 1st of September was a warm day, and Kings Cross Station was bustling with people hurrying to and fro in an effort to meet their various appointments. All was not normal with the station however, as a tall boy of 12 years was walking by himself to the platforms 9 and 10, carrying a large trunk and even more peculiarly, an owl in a cage. If anyone had been watching the boy, they would have been very startled when he quite suddenly walked right between the walls of platform 9 and 10, disappearing from view.

Harry stepped onto platform 9 ¾ on September 1st, excited to be getting back to Hogwarts. With the glass snake safely inside his trouser pocket, and his real snake curled around his middle, the boy-who-lived stepped through the crowd of witches and wizards. Moving with a purpose towards the train, Harry wondered what this year had in store for him. With the Chamber of Secrets no longer under threat of being opened and the basilisk still hidden safely away within its confines, Harry felt that this year could be used constructively to gleam a better understanding of his creature inheritance, as well as the various other inheritances he would eventually inherit on his 17th birthday when he came of age. Stepping onto the train, Harry sought out Tom's compartment that he had hid in exactly a year prior. This time though, he would be inviting his friends inside.

Settling down, Harry opened Every Magical Creature Known to a bookmarked page and began to read 

**Harpy-Greek**

**The harpy is a distant relative of Bulgaria’s more popular Veela (see page 4,460), and is described as a half-human half-bird creature** **that lives in the higher altitudes of Mt. Olympus. Very elusive creatures, the Harpies are a species of all females, similar to the Keres (see page 1,067). Many men have attempted to seduce one, usually at the cost of their own lives. The last recorded sighting of a Harpy was in 1503 by** **an unnamed forager, who had had time to record the sighting in a journal before falling to his death.**

Harry sighed, there seemed to be an awfully lot of Veela-like creatures in the world. Right on time, Draco stormed into the compartment, Theo not far behind him. It seemed that the two were in a bit of an argument, and Draco's hair was ruffled, quite reminiscent of the way a bird puffed up in a display of agitation. Theo was laughing his ass off. _Ah, so it’s height related then._

Theo seemed to have found great pleasure in making fun of Draco’s height at every opportunity when they had been in Diagon Alley, and it seemed that he still hasn't gotten it all out of his system quite yet.

“Draco, all I'm saying is-”

“You’re a tool, you know that, Nott?” Draco still looked like a small angry bird, and Harry felt a large amount of affection at the sight, which confused him greatly.

“‘Ello lads, lovely weather we're having.” Blaise strolled in last, closing the door behind him. He was carrying a very ornate plate with what appeared to be fish and chips on it. When Harry pointed it out Blaise explained that he and his mother had been eating in the muggle world and he had decided to get some takeaway. Chalking that up to the usual Zabini chaos, Harry turned back to the argument (read Draco screeching while Theo gets a cramp from laughing too hard). It was good entertainment, as it goes, but the volume was a little grating.

As the train pulled away, the shortest two of the group finally settled down into their seats, with Draco next to Harry and Theo sitting cross legged on the floor, trying to convince Blaise to stop lounging across the entire left-side seating and give him room to sit down. Harry didn't feel like pointing out that their side had two extra spots, and Draco was feeling sadistic so he didn't say anything either.

The rest of the ride was quiet, with Harry furiously reading through the Ha-’s of his book, Draco reading over his shoulder (more like over his elbow but you get the idea). Theo eventually just sat down on Blaise’s stomach, the other boy not appearing all that affected by it.

When the train started to slow, they got changed into their school robes, and by the time they were done the train had come to a full stop and people were starting to get off. Moving through the crowd, the four Slytherin boys made their way to the ‘horseless’ carriages with the rest of the school. Harry was tempted to reach out and pet one of the Thestrals, but figured the action would start up a round of uncomfortable questioning.

The carriage ride to the school was quiet, Harry belatedly thanked Draco for his Birthday gift, revealing that he kept it on him at all times. The blonde seemed embarrassed but pleased with that knowledge. Stepping out of the carriages, the group made their way up to the castle proper, chattering louder this time about the new potential firsties for Slytherin.

Settling down at the table, Harry looked down a ways and shared a nod with Maria Vasiey, the Slytherin princess.

_It seems that no one is opposed._

Turning back to the front, pleased with the confirmation that he was in fact unchallenged in his running for Slytherin Prince this year, he watched the sorting with careful eyes.

_“Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom were genuine, as well as most of your roommates,” Death started, “-but Hermione Granger never cared much about you, and was happy to report your movements back to Dumbledore, and most of the Weasley family were being paid hand over fist to keep you on the Light side of the-war-that-never-should-have-happened.”_

Harry remembered what Death had said in their first meeting very well, and felt it prudent to get close to Luna again. Neville was off having a good time in Hufflepuff, and had been polite but warry in regards to him. Harry felt it was very important to have at least one tie to his last life, and Luna was just crazy enough to be able to fit in with his new crowd.

This thought was confirmed when little 11 year old Luna Lovegood looked him dead in the eyes and _winked_ as the hat shouted out Ravenclaw.

_...Ok, what the fuck?_

He watched, gaze piercing, as she floated down to the first year section of the Ravenclaw table, immediately beginning to chatter at the girl next to her, no doubt going on about nargles or something. 

The rest of the sorting didn't have any more surprises, thank god, though Ginny Weasley appeared to have been arguing quite strongly with the hat, but eventually sulked off to Gryffindor.

“Welcome back to another wonderful year at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore began, eyes twinkling, “In the event of Professor Quirrell's unfortunate decision to return to the muggle studies post, I am pleased to announce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher: Gilderoy Lockhart!”

An uproarious applause echoed through the great hall, and Lockhart stood with a flourish. Harry noticed that Snape appeared to be fighting the urge to drown himself (or Lockhart) in his soup. The other teachers were of a similar deposition, and McGonagall’s lips were pressed tightly into a thin line. 

“Thank you... thank you! I can't wait to teach you all this year, I'm sure we’ll become quite good friends.” he sent off a wink at the crowd, Harry briefly considered castrating the man in his sleep, it would certainly do the world a favor.

After that was the feast, which felt quite brief to Harry, who was trying to figure out the enigma that was Luna Lovegood. The wink she sent him was glaringly obvious, almost comical in nature, and couldn't be mistaken as anything different; which begged the question of just what she knew… and how.

He was walking back to the common room with his friends after the feast when Greengrass came up from behind them, elbowing Draco out of the way and butting into the conversation, “when do you plan to help me with our agreement, Heir Potter? I think that this year is-” She was cut off when Draco slammed into her from the other side, retaking his spot next to Harry; Blaise and Theo started snickering loudly at the display.

“Piss off Greengrass, you can beg for the princess spot later, maybe when the big contenders are out of the running?” Draco turned his nose up at her and pushed them along, intent on leaving the girl behind. Quite soon after they came upon the commons, going inside and settling into their usual cluster of couches.

A few minutes after the firsties arrived, most of them looking like the type of snot-nosed brats that Blaise would take great pleasure in tormenting. One of them, however, looked scared shitless.

_Muggle-born, maybe?_

The newest fifth year prefects, Snyde and Richmond, he thought, told them the rules before leading them up to the dorms. Once the two of them had returned and the current king, Marcus Flint, rose from his seat to address the house, starting off the first house meeting of the year.

“Alright everyone, as I'm sure you're aware, Urquhart is no longer eligible for the Prince title.” there were affirmative murmurs all around, Flint continued, “Our own Princess, Mariya Vaisey, has sent forward the nomination of Heir Hadrian James Potter.” more acknowledging murmurs, “are there any opposed with this appointment?” A few people looked like they wanted to speak up, but glanced at Harry and decided against it, fighting him for the sake of blood purity wasn't worth the potential injuries. 

“No one? Great. Moving on...” Flint proceeded to detail issues pertaining to the house, and eventually put a name to the first year that had seemed so nervous that night, “One of our first years is a muggleborn named Virginia White, you lot know the rules.” Of course, a united front outside of the commons, and relentless bullying inside of it. There weren't very many half-bloods in Slytherin, most of them coming from influential families like him and Tracey Davis, and muggleborns were almost unheard of, and horribly bullied by the more blood-supremacist part of the house. That girl would have a hard time unless she latched onto an influential pure-blood or half-blood that was willing to protect her.

The speech wrapped up pretty quickly after that, and Harry got up to chat with Vaisey about their duties. She was a tall girl, about as tall as Theo, with black hair in a short pixie cut and deep blue eyes. She glared at him imploringly.

“Evening, Potter,” she sassed, glint in her eyes, “tell me something, why exactly is that Greengrass bitch vying for my spot?”

He shrugged, noncommittal, “Someone's got to take over after you, she seemed like the best option. I told her I’d get Parkinson out of the way, but everything else wasn't my business.” He smirked a little, “Figured you would enjoy having a new chew toy?”

She seemed placated by this, and started giving him the rundown of his general duties, “The firsties probably won't be telling the mudblood anything, so don't bother with that one unless you see something interesting.” she grimaced, he rolled his eyes, “the third years and down are going to come to you to help them with house rivalries, I'm sure you can find some way to help with that. Hmm... try not to stir the pot too much in the first few months, Potter. Farley’s got her eye on you and Warrington's intrigued, but everyone else is still high strung about this appointment. You're lucky Malfoy is a shoe-in for seeker or Flint would have given you some grief.”

He was surprised that Warrington wasn't out for blood, he seemed like the type to lead the campaign against him. Interesting.

“Any questions?” she rounded out, sounding like she would wring his neck if he did. He shook his head, and then her hand, before wandered back to his friends, intent on winning at least one game of chess against Blaise before the night was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder what'll happen to poor Virginia White, the girl will need a certain type of cunning to survive in Slytherin.


	21. Mischief Gains an Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore is puzzled by the enigma that is Harry Potter, who has added the sardonic and witty Tracy Davis to his circle of companions.  
> Harry is asked for assistance by a little Virginia White, who isn't at all what he had expected.  
> 

While Harry Potter and his friends enjoyed their first night back in Hogwarts, Dumbledore sat in his office, watching his new tool with a fascinated gleam in his eyes. He had been feeling extremely paranoid about Tom the past several months, prompting him to buy a very special type of sneakoscope. Many of the ones currently in circulation were cheap imitations of a true model, which was a globe of hollowed out crystal, and was actually called a Seeing Glass. The nature of a Seeing Glass was quite more refined as well, and allowed the user to divinate a set topic, regardless of their actual abilities in divination. Dumbledore had commissioned one that allowed him to find out where a person's true allegiances lied.

They were absurdly expensive, needing to be created out of a very specific kind of crystal, taking several years of precise cutting, and needing to be embedded with several types of carefully cast enchantments. He had ended up needing to dip into the school's vault to purchase it, but all the hefty cost was more than worth it.

He leaned closer to the ball, deciding to test it. The instructions that came with the crystal had required that it be left in a sunny spot for a month before use, to charge up the energy or some sort. Which had forced him to leave it be for the summer, but it had been left on a window sill for the entire summer break, and was more than charged now. Thinking for a moment, he said clearly and precisely, “Minerva McGonagall”.

The sneakoscope started spinning, gathering up everything it could gleam about the woman's allegiances. After several moments it eventually started out slow to a stop, and words were reflected out into the air above the orb.

Reading the synopsis, he smiled smugly, finding that the Transfiguration professor was loyal to Hogwarts and the McGonagall name, and trusted one Albus Dumbledore inexplicitly. 

Smiling broader, he was quick to say the name “Harry Potter” at the device. It started spinning, and he waited with bated breath as the results came though. Would the boy be too far gone and need to be taken care of? Or were the compulsions still in place and doing their job? The device slowed to a stop, reflecting words up into the air just as it had with McGonagall. He was almost immediately puzzled by the results. Listed under Harry Potter's name was simply: Death. That was his only allegiance? To death? Dumbledore frowned, this required careful consideration and thought.

Coming to a quick decision, he called up two house elves to send for Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, deciding firmly that a different approach needed to be taken for this new development.

* * *

“Ah, hello Miss. Granger, Mr. Weasley, thank you for joining me on such short notice.” They both smiled politely, and took a seat in front of his desk.

“Now, I'm sure you've made plenty of progress in coaxing Harry Potter back onto the right path, but I'm afraid that new information has come to light that is going to force a change in tactics.” He explained carefully, solemn expression on his face.

“What do you mean headmaster?” Miss. Granger asked imploringly, her thirst for knowledge overriding her tact.

“I'm afraid that information has to be kept secret for now, my dear. We are going through dire straits this year. Worry not though, I still wish for you both to keep a close eye on the boy-who-lived, but try to have as little interaction with him as possible.”

They both appeared worried, and a subtle brush of legitimacy revealed that the Granger girl thought the boy must be nearing an emotional breakdown or something, and Ronald fretted that Draco Malfoy had succeeded in turning the boy into the next dark lord.

_Hmmm… I can use that._

Regardless of their worry, both of the second years nodded obediently.

“Thank you both for understanding, I'm sure once I have enough information myself I will share with you what I have learned. Until then though, I implore you to get a good night's rest.”

They both thanked him for his time and left, heading back to the Gryffindor commons.

Dumbledore leaned back into his chair with a sigh, there was no explainable reasoning behind Harry Potter being in allegiance with a concept, unless of course… 

_No… the Hallows have been missing for hundreds of years. It's inconceivable for a boy of 12 to somehow come into contact with all three. There must be some other reason._

He sat there and though long into the night, unaware of a tall man with gold and green eyes watching him with amusement from the shadows.

* * *

The first week of classes went about as expected for Harry. Snape was a bit more sour than usual and McGonagall had lectured on how to (theoretically) turn peacocks into clothes hampers. Theo had kept elbowing Draco in the side through that lecture, much to the other boys' displeasure.

The first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson was much anticipated by most of the girls in their year, not including Tracey Davis, who insisted the man was a pompous prat and undeserving of his titles. She sat with the Slytherin boys that morning, having been shunned by the other girls.

“It's simply dreadful you know,” she took a bite of her omelet, ranting to a slightly curious Harry, who felt that this was his first enjoyable conversation with a girl he'd had thus far, “the man would be much better suited for a zoo, being the main attraction of course.” Draco snorted his milk up his nose. She took another bite, “-and those robes of his are just so utterly gaudy, I’d sooner gauge out my eyes than swoon at him.” Harry nodded in agreement, finding the girl to be extremely witty and entertaining company. Blaise seemed to agree, and was flirting with her rather heavily.

“I don't want to even start on that creepy smile of his. I mean honestly he's probably a pedophile- quiet Zabini, I'm out of your league and you know it- anyway, I hypothesize he’ll last at least a week before getting chased out by the sensible people in this school.” She finished off her omelet, and her rant.

“I would hate to argue against your rather sound theory, but how many people in this school would you consider particularly sensible?” Harry questioned, now deciding that Tracy Davis was someone to keep around, for amusement if nothing else.

“Oh bugger you're right. We're doomed, aren't we Potter? The morons have taken control.” She groaned, and he pat her shoulder lightly, nodding solemnly. Parkinson rolled her eyes from down the table.

* * *

Walking into the Defense classroom that morning, Harry submitted himself to the knowledge that he would likely be forced to clean up cornish pixies again. Him, Draco, and Blaise commandeered the back row, farthest from the front, Theo and Davis sitting in the row in front of them. The doors to the office slammed open and with a flourish, their new professor had arrived.

“Me.”

_Oh fuck off._

“Gilderoy Lockhart. Order of Merlin, third class, honorary member of the dark forces defense league, and five times winner of Witch Weekly's most charming smile award, but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the phantom banshee by smiling at her.” He grinned broadly to the crowd of students. Davis audibly groaned, head in her hands. Theo pat her back comfortingly. Blaise was already writing down prank ideas.

He leaned over and down to Draco, “How many galleons would you place on a bet?”

“Maximum? About 1,000ʛ I reckon, why?”

“I bet you all of it I can get him thrown into Azkaban by the end of the school year.”

Draco's eyes widened, “Harry, I didn't take you for a gambler, that's an awfully big leap you're making.”

“Don't think it's likely?”

“Likely??” He stage whispered, “Harry, he's the most beloved man of middle aged witches across the country! You've lost before it’s even started!”

“So is that a bet or not?”

Draco gaped at him, eyes wide, “It's a bloody bet mate. Hell.”

They shook on it.

The rest of class didn't go near as smoothly, Harry had written out random answers on the Gilderoy Lockhart Pop-Quiz, deciding that his pride was worth more than one measly grade. He almost ate his words seeing the look on Granger's face when Lockhart had said she was the only one to score perfectly on the quiz.

The cornish pixies had also been a bit of a mess, but Harry had been expecting it. He started gathering up his supplies immediately after the sheet covering the cage had been lifted, revealing the little menaces inside. His friends (and Davis) quickly followed his lead, and they had gotten out with minimal issues. Walking through the halls on the way to the commons, Harry contemplated if he would get a confession out of Lockhart, or just write a letter to the Daily Prophet pointing out the discrepancies in his books. He made a face, why would he only go halfway? Doing both was the smartest plan, Madam Bones would never arrest a man for overlapping dates in his book series, that would be a gross overstep of power, as well as bloody stupid.

“I just knew it!” Davis shouted, free of the classroom and feeling indicative, “that man would be a better use to society as a clown in the circus, honestly!”

The boys all nodded along, even though three of them didn't know what the hell a circus even was. Harry promised to explain it later.

Davis was storming along ahead of them, ranting all the while. Blaise chased after her, still quite smitten. This left Harry, Theo, and Draco walking along at a slower pace, though Draco was practically speed walking to match Harry's faster strides. 

“Oh! Good evening.” a very familiar breezy voice sounded from an adjacent corridor. Harry turned, making eye contact with one Luna Lovegood, a small little first year without her shoes.

“It's morning actually.” Draco felt it was something important to note, but Luna didn't show that she registered a word he said, which miffed the blonde just a tad.

“Good morning to you too, Miss…?” Harry supplied, testing the waters of this strange conversation.

She tilted her head, much like a cat would, “You know who I am, Harry.” His blood ran cold.

“Riiiight, ok.” Draco seemed more annoyed than anything, “we’ll just be going now, come along chaps.” Theo followed after, snickering softly, but Harry lagged behind a little, still holding eye contact with Luna for as long as possible, till she disappeared from view.

* * *

The Slytherin boys and Davis were lounging in the common room that day after classes. Davis was schooling Blaise and Draco at poker, and Theo was reading his fifth book of the week, topping out at one a day it seemed. Harry was dealing cards for the impromptu poker match, which was being played with galleons instead of chips, because rich kids.

The common room was awfully quiet that night, as most of the upper years had run off to a (heavily alcoholic) party of some sort in a warded room on the 7th floor. Harry would akin it to a boarding schools version of a rave, and wondered faintly if Blaise would sneak into the next one. Probably, it was definitely something the Italian boy would do. 

As he was contemplating the pros and cons of a party held in the Room of Requirement, a quiet voice spoke up from behind him.

“Uhm… Mr. Potter?”, he turned around to find tiny little Victoria White, fidgeting with the hem of her outer sleeves. Harry considered his options. On one hand the girl probably just had one of the worst weeks of her young life, but on the other he really didn't feel like dealing with the bigots complaining about it if he decided to protect her.

“What is it?” his voice was emotionless, the perfect blend of uncaring but still willing to listen.

“I.. um.. Would- would you be willing to teach me some combat spells?” 

_Oh… OH._

So that's why she’s in Slytherin. She certainly appeared meek and afraid, but she was asking rather plainly for him to give her the means to protect herself, instead of just asking him to make the bullying stop, which was _very_ interesting. Glancing at his friends, they all seemed to have come to the same conclusions, and Blaise looked about ready to lunge over the table and congratulate the girl on her balls of steel.

“No, I'm afraid I don't have the time for that,” everyone in the group looked shocked at this, excluding Theo, who seemed to know exactly what he was playing at, “but my companion, Blaise Zabini,” he gestured at the boy, whose smile was growing from excited to demonic, “would likely be happy to teach you a thing or two.”

Blaise most certainly was, and left the poker match immediately to pull the small girl aside, gesturing wildly as he lectured on all the ways to make people beg for mercy at your feet.

_I'm sure things will work out fine for her_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this is just a really fun chapter for me, right up there with Harry Likes the Color Red. There's the scene with the Seeing Glass, the witty humor of the bet with Draco, Tracy Davis (enough said).  
> It was also a struggle, because there was a scene with Luna and Harry that I kept trying to add in and it just wasn't working. Ah well, she'll have her time to shine soon enough.


	22. Dirty Business is Effective Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom is let out of timeout for a brief moment, Harry almost immediately regrets it.  
> Blaise reads a very interesting book, and Theo looks up Norse gods.  
> Quidditch tryouts are grating on Draco's nerves, but he had a hearty breakfast, which helped quite a bit.

**Ichchadhari Naags-India**

**A magical breed of cobra that has developed the ability to shape-shift. The Ichchadhari Naag (male) or Ichchadhari Naagin (female), exists in an immortal state for about 100 years before aging at the rate of a normal cobra. Ichchadhari Nagg and Naagin have a gem called Naagmani (cobra pearl, serpent crystal, snake gem), considered much more valuable than any precious stone. There are thousands of accounts of people dying through snake bites when they try to steal the Naagmani.**

Harry sighed, crossing the Ichchadhari Naags out of his book, he was quite positive that he wasn't anything snake related, but it was still interesting to read about all the different breeds of magical snakes, there were quite a lot of them.

_“~Shape-shifting sounds boring.~”_

Magical snakes aside for the moment, Thasin, (a muggle snake) didn’t exactly understand what shape-shifting was, apparently.

 _“~You wouldn't want to turn into a human?~"_ He was sitting at the edge of the Black Lake, reading his book to Thasin, who was currently hissing out all the reasons being a human sucked major ass.

_“~I couldn’t ever bother with all the things you humans put up with. This whole ‘school’ business sounds much too tedious to me.~”_

She had some very compelling points.

Besides the sudden and inexplicable urge to figure out his animagus transformation and run off to live in a forest somewhere and never be human again, Harry was feeling very relaxed at the moment. Sure, it was a little too warm out for his liking, but it was nice to sit at the lakeside by himself. He had been surrounded by people almost constantly the past two weeks, with the younger years coming to him for help and his friends being almost constant companions, he hadn't had the time to sit down and contemplate things.

Draco was currently practicing quidditch drills with a vengeance in the hopes of trying out for the team next week, and Blaise was off stalking the Weasley twins with Victoria White, his new apprentice. Theo had been holed up in the library since breakfast, and Davis was off doing… girl things, he surmised. This left him to his own devices, and history had proved time and time again that an idle Harry Potter was a dangerous Harry Potter.

The currently potentially dangerous Harry Potter was contemplating the Chamber of Secrets. Which was quite a dangerous thing to do if you had the means to get into the place. Harry was still quite cross with Tom, but the man did have a very deep repertoire of knowledge about all things Slytherin, it was likely that he knew everything there was to know about the place.

Harry sighed deeply, before opening the door to Tom's mindscape.

_Leech! I'm sorry for not telling you before-_

_Save it Riddle, I'm still mad at you._

_...How can I make you not mad at me?_

Typical.

 _Just give me time, snake-face, you kept that from me for nearly a decade. I have the right to be pissed off._ He considered things for a moment. _I do need to know everything about the Chamber of Secrets though, so if you want to earn my forgiveness faster that would be a good way to do it._

_Hmm... you’ll have to come in here._

Harry rolled his eyes, but nonetheless started to meditate, slipping into his mindscape. He hadn't been there in a long time, a year it had to be. So when Tom met him in the girls lavatory, his shock was understandable.

“You’ve gotten taller, Leech.”

“Yea? Well you’ve gotten uglier, I guess we all change.”

Tom looked like he had when he was in his late 20’s, and was quite attractive all things considered, but Harry was still pissed, and couldn't think up a better insult.

Tom, ignoring the jab, led him into the chamber and over to the plush chairs in the reading nook. Harry considered the possibility that Tom had been going insane with loneliness, likely from ignoring Harry for a year and Harry ignoring him for three months.

“I'll admit that I don't know as much as I would like about the chamber,” Tom finally spoke, summoning some tea and fixing Harry a cuppa.

“I'm aware of a large chamber after the main one, but the basilisk refused to grant me passage into it, he said I was unworthy.” Tom sniffed, apparently still insulted by the memory. Sipping his tea, Harry waited for him to continue… he didn't.

“That's it? That's all you know.'' He was actually impressed with Toms lack of knowledge, it wasn't often that the man _didn't_ know everything about a certain topic.

“It's more than most, Harry. There are very few that even remember the legend anymore.”

He could submit to that, the only reason he had known anything about it in his first life was because Professor Binns, who was a ghost, had been prodded into sharing with the class.

“Harry.” he looked up, watching passively as Tom set down his saucer and donned a remorseful look. He realized with minor unease that this was about to careen off course into an emotional conversation. Tom looked insistent however, so he set his cup down as well with a small sigh.

“Harry, I didn't get the chance to explain myself in July, and I feel that might help you feel less angry at me.” Tom looked at him like a kicked puppy, pulling out all the stops on the manipulation.

He raised an eyebrow, not buying it, “continue.”

“It had been a complete accident-”

“Bullshit.”

Tom narrowed his eyes, and started again, “I hadn't expected it to work-”

“If you're going to lie at least make it believable, Riddle.”

“Blast it child!” Tom leapt up and began to pace, “You could not even _begin_ to comprehend the amount of things I do for you. I am an _adult!_ I am allowed to make my own _bloody_ decisions! However, if not telling you about those decisions bothers you, then I offer you my most sincere apologies.” 

Harry sat on the couch, watching with a calculating gaze as Tom took a moment to come down from his little outburst. He realized, quite suddenly, that Tom wasn't angry because Harry called him on his manipulations; Tom was angry that Harry had locked him away and refused to talk to him, angry that Harry demanded to know everything about his plans, even if his involvement would jeopardize them. Harry came to the realization before Tom did.

“For someone who claims to hate family, you sure act an awful lot like you’re my father.”

The older man froze, and Harry felt an unseen force practically shove him out of Tom's mindscape and into the waking world.

_Tom?_

No reply, Harry felt the door between their minds slowly swing shut.

* * *

Blaise Zabini had yet to read the book he had stolen from the family library, feeling a mild apprehension with the idea. The book felt dangerous, pulsing with mischievous magic not unlike his own. It called to him in a way that made it seem almost alive, and he had been distantly considering the likelihood of it being cursed.

The book moved sometimes, ruffling its pages and nudging him in the arm if it was in reach. Sometimes he would hear a deep voice whispering to him, coaxing him closer and begging him to just _take_ _a tiny little peek, what's the harm with one little peek?_ As the days went on and he continued to ignore it, things got more and more intense.

This all came to a head one night, the night before quidditch tryouts in fact, when he had been woken by a deep laugh in his ear. Jolting up with a gasp, he swung his head around furiously, finding that the green book was lying innocently on his pillow, right next to his head. Either Harry was playing a shitty prank on him, or the book had managed to get out of his warded trunk and onto his pillow at some point in the night.

Blaise wasn't scared in any capacity, though he was quite annoyed. If the book was that insistent on being read, he wouldn't be getting any sleep till he eventually gave in. Snatching the thing up with a huff, he grabbed for his wand on the table beside him and tightened the curtains around his bed. Lighting a lumos, he opened the book to the first page. It was all in old Norse.

_Bloody buggering- what the fuck?_

The incomprehensible letters started shifting around, rearranging into English as Blaise watched on with growing fascination. Once the letters were settled, the first page and potentially the rest of the book was all translated perfectly into modern English. Blaise sat there, gobsmacked for a moment, before eagerly beginning to read.

**Gods and their Worshippers**

**For as long as there were gods there were also worshippers. Gods exist without worship but worship does not exist without the gods. As long a someone worships a god however, they will be bestowed with the gods favor, and by extension several gifts. Those who follow Baldr will be unbeatable on the battlefield. Those of Thor may harness the power of storms. Those who pledge to Hel will live a life long and eternal. Gods love those who follow them, and promise great power to mortals in their favor.**

**Each god has been found to require a specific type of worship from their followers. If you wish to be bestowed with the powers of the gods you must first show you hold knowledge over their abilities. Thor enjoys the boom of thunder. Hel demands the sacrifice of life. Baldr thirsts for acts of war. Sif commands an even blade. Frigg requests a steady hand.**

**All gods demand something different from their followers, but they all agree that a pledge is required as well. The first step of any worship is the execution of your gods will, but the second is always a pledge of your very being.**

**Loki requests tricks, mischief in its purest form. He finds pleasure in the poor luck of others, and demands that you do the same. The first step in becoming a worshiper of Loki is first appeasing his simple request. If chaos can not be wrought, he shall never be appeased.**

Blaise was vibrating with excitement. The first page alone had _so much_ for him to pick apart, it was almost too good to be true. He grinned devilishly, his great great grandfather had been right, Loki wasn’t in the least bit a respectable god to worship, but Blaise wasn't a respectable person, and this sounded like one hell of a good time.

He continued to read late into the night.

* * *

It was the day of quidditch tryouts, and Draco was a ball of nerves during breakfast. The second class of Defense had happened the day before, and was just as horrible as the first. Unsurprisingly, some of the Slytherin girls were becoming disillusioned with Lockhart, which did nothing for Davis’ ego.

“I _told_ you Daphne, that man is a horrid teacher.” Greengrass rolled her eyes, annoyed with the other girl’s gloating.

“You don't know that Davis, maybe he was just nervous about his first few lessons, you can't blame him for nerves!” Parkinson was less convinced, believing Lockhart to be a god among men… or something.

Harry took a bite of his omelet, only half listening to the conversation. Draco wasn’t eating anything, deciding to mumble quidditch plays under his breath instead. Harry subtly placed a piece of buttered toast on his plate.

“-and you are aware that Warrington will throw you through a wall if he catches you, right?” Theo was currently trying to convince Blaise to not prank the older boys dorm, but the threat of bodily harm didn't seem to deter him any less.

“So if he _doesn't_ catch me-” Harry scooped some eggs onto Draco’s plate along with the toast.

“You're blind if you think that man can do anything except style his hair, Parkinson-” Davis was getting wound up, halfway standing up and pink in the face.

“-I feel like you should have better preservation skills than this, mate.” He managed to sneak a few slices of bacon onto the plate as well, Draco had started to nibble on his toast.

“Honestly Davis you couldn't spot talent if it slapped you in the face-” the aforementioned girl lunged across the table and slapped Parkinson in the face, either trying to prove a point or just awfully pissed.

Harry sighed, the Slytherin table was almost as rowdy as the Gryffindor one today. It was a horrible environment for someone who was already stressed. Picking himself off the bench, he grabbed Draco’s plate and Draco himself and gently led the shorter boy out of the great hall.

He walked them out and down to the Black Lake, quietly explaining where they were going and why. Draco didn't seem to notice he wasn't in the great hall anymore, just following along. After maneuvering them both down to the rocky shore, he handed Draco his plate and sat with him quietly as the other boy ate.

It was the second week of the school year, and a Friday. Blaise had been teaching little Victoria White well, and her dorm mates seemed to be giving her a wide berth now. The girl was vicious, he could tell, if Vaisey wasn't such a bigot the two would get along like a house on fire, though Victoria was much more subtle in her demeanor.

“Thanks, Harry.” Draco had finished his food, placing the plate on a flat-ish rock, and turning to stare out into the water.

“You've got to relax mate, you're the best seeker in this school and they all know it.” Draco smirked a little at that, the typical Malfoy pompousness starting to sneak back to the surface. “You haven't a thing to worry about.”

“Of course! I’m the best seeker in this school after all.” 

_There he is._

The two boys sat quietly on the shore, not knowing (because how could they) that the spot in which they sat would one day become their personal escape. That one day they would skip rocks across the lake and talk about the future, _their_ future. That one day they would bring a picnic down and relax in each other's company for hours on end. That one day, late at night after watching the stars, they would kiss each other, tender and loving, right there on the rocky shore of the Black Lake. That was far off in the distance however, and maybe for now they were better off not knowing. 

* * *

It was a good day for quidditch tryouts, all things considered. The three boys that weren't trying out as well as Davis and Greengrass all made their way down to the quidditch pitch, while Draco had run back to the dorm to change. Walking up the rickety steps to the benches, Harry and Greengrass discussed house politics.

“At the moment, Lord Parkinson holds substantial weight in quidditch stocks, and would likely buy the team new nimbus 2001’s if it meant his daughter would be in favor with Flint-which gives her popularity among the older years-which is very important when it comes to running for king or queen. I can secure your appointment as princess next year sure, but everything past that is none of my business. I can, however, recommend fighting fire with fire and have your father fund a popular club or something though.” He had heard this rant many times from Tom. Politics were a lot of pandering to your supporters after all, you couldn't get by for long without buying the lot of them. Harry himself planned to supply the team with firebolts next year to assure himself Flint’s support.

She huffed, Granger-like, “it just seems so dirty!”

He rolled his eyes, “Politics are a dirty business Greengrass, the sooner you learn that the better.”

The group had finally reached the top of the stairs, quickly sitting down in the nearest bleachers. Harry looked around at the group, mildly amused with the people he has surrounded himself with. Blaise was flirting heavily with Davis (again), who looked extremely unimpressed. Theo was reading a book, this one about Norse gods of all things. Greengrass was rearing up for a rant.

“Well what am I supposed to do to beat her? My father would never willingly pay a bunch of school kids off for the sake of house politics, he has better things to do!”

Greengrass was sharp, and a steady leader that would work well to keep the house on a single path, but she wasn't a politician in the slightest. That wasn’t a bad thing really, business savvy people didn’t tend to be particularly adept in it, but she had a great learning opportunity in front of her.

“Ask your mother? It isn't my problem Greengrass, either way you'll be Princess next year. Nowhere in our agreement did it say I had to make sure you were popular with the older years, just that you got the spot.”

Greengrass proceeded to stew in her own anger for the rest of the time they were waiting, which was roughly ten minutes. Harry left her to it and joined Theo in the bench above them, deciding to question him on the strange book subject.

“I didn't know you were reading up on Norse mythology mate, is this a new interest of yours?” he settled down next to the shorter boy, who had sighed deeply before placing his bookmark and setting the book aside gently, seemingly wishing he would be left alone to his addiction.

“Its Norse gods specifically.” Blaise choked on his own saliva, which brought on a coughing fit that impressed Davis even less than his flirting abilities. “I'm curious about the religious practices of the Germanic people that persisted through the period that the Norse gods were at their peak. Sadly, most of the direct resources that documented specific ritualistic practices have been lost to time, and historians believe that the vast majority of them were destroyed with the Library of Alexandria when it burned, as by that point the Roman Empire had conquered the Germanic tribes, and had stolen many of their priceless scriptures.” Harry was impressed by the other boy's knowledge, Blaise was growing rather pale as he pressed on, “it is hypothesized that either the documents had indeed burned, or a wealthy Roman family stole many of them away, which would place their current location around Italy.”

Theo rounded out his impromptu lecture with a ‘now fuck off’, before making a point of grabbing his book again and continuing to read. Harry rolled his eyes in exasperation, before glancing curiously at Blaise, who still looked rather pale. _Suspicious._

“Got something to confess, Zabini?” he teased, casually trying to squeeze information out of the boy. Sadly, the Italian knew all his tricks, and could do one better. Winking roguishly, Blaise laid it down thick, “What can I say, Potter? My family's bad to the bone.”

Harry almost laughed at the muggle song reference, remembering that Blaise and his mom casually immersed themselves in muggle culture on the daily. The other boy had tried to cover up his guilt with sass, but he still told Harry an awful lot. The first being that his entire family, not just his mother apparently, were known in a less than stellar light. This made him think the boy was likely related to the Italian mafia family The Zabini’s, which really wasn't that much of a shock. What was however, was that Blaise had practically admitted that his family had old Norse texts about worshiping ancient gods, and had been keeping it secret for hundreds of years for an unknown reason. Which was a huge revelation and put into question just what was in those texts. Theo had also apparently gathered all this, and was looking at Blaise in a way that implied he wanted to pick the other boy's brain of everything he knew. If Theo wasn't so damn ambitious in his search for knowledge, he would have gone right to Ravenclaw, but that boy would tear someone in half to get his hands on a rare tomb.

The tense atmosphere was broken when faint voices could suddenly be heard, coming from the pitch. Looking down, the group watched the Slytherin quidditch team take off as the hopefuls lined up on the ground. Flint was shouting out orders of some nature, but they were too high up to hear much of anything. The hopefuls all got on their brooms, flying up and beginning the drills.

Harry could tell from his years flying that Draco was the best out of everyone there, though he didn't hold a candle to Harry's own flying ability. Lucky for Draco though, Harry didn't have the time or energy to play quidditch, and felt that he already got a pretty solid workout gutting various animals every Sunday. He had also been entertaining the idea of sneaking into the Forbidden Forest (because let's be honest, he’ll never escape that place, why bother any more) and asking the centaurs to teach him archery. Bane seemed to think he was interesting the last time they met, maybe he would be willing? 

The rest of the tryouts passed quick enough, and Draco was (unsurprisingly) chosen as seeker. The group made their way down the rickety steps to congratulate him, filing out into the field.

“Cheers mate, I told you so.” was the first thing Harry got off, messing up Draco's hair, much to the shorter boys chagrin. Turning away from Draco however, who was getting congratulated by the other boys and Davis, Harry caught the eye of Marcus Flint, and motioned with his head for the older boy to come with him. They moved over a few yards from the crowd, and Flint already had a pinched expression, probably not wanting to talk to Harry more than absolutely necessary.

“What is it Potter.” he hissed out quietly, leaning down to the shorter boy.

“You know that inventor, Randolph Spudmore? The one that's supposedly making a new broom meant to blow the Nimbus out of the sky?” Flint was looking a lot more interested in the conversation now.

“What of ‘im?”

“Well, I was considering buying the team a few when they came out, if they're really as good as he claims that is.” Harry knew this was a bit like cheating, as he was well aware of just how good the Firebolt was, and did not consider this a gamble in the slightest. Flint however, likely though he was one bold bastard, as the broom was currently just barely out of the planning phases.

“Well, if they're really that good I'm sure the team would appreciate your generosity.”

They shared a nod, and Harry returned to his friends, with a pointed look at Greengrass, who had been watching the exchange from a distance.

 _“Dirty business.”_ she mouthed at him.

 _“Effective business.”_ he mouthed right back, before turning his attention to Draco, who had just kicked Theo in the knee for saying he only got the spot because he was short. Theo went down like a sack of bricks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Summary: haha Blaise reads a good book :)))))  
> The Chapter: Blaise plans on joining a cult.  
> (why am I like this)


	23. A Library Greater than that of Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry sneaks out of the dorms at night, insistent on solving a mystery, he finds lost treasure instead.

Harry was under his invisibility cloak, sneaking through the halls of Hogwarts late at night. Tom was still ignoring him, so he took it upon himself to go down into the real Chamber of Secrets and poke around (or cause trouble).

If anyone was on the third floor that night, or perhaps nearer to the girls lavatory, they would have noticed the door to the creak open with no prompting, and an invisible someone sneaking inside. 

Harry crept through the restroom, not wanting to alert Myrtle to his being there. Moving silently over to the sink, he crouched down and whispered  _ “~open~”  _ to the pipes.

Waiting quietly, he watched as the sink opened up to reveal a steep (and very dirty) slide down into darkness.

_ Leech. _

Harry froze,  _ Tom? _

_ Be careful. _

A small smile crossed his features. Tom seemed to have stopped sulking and was back to his (fatherly) fretting.

_ Aren't I always? _

_ Hardly. _

Rolling his eyes, Harry crouched down, bracing his hands on the sides of the slide. He positioned his legs, preparing himself for a fast and potentially painful landing. Scooting himself further into the slide, he took a deep breath before pushing himself down the tube, quickly slipping and plummeting down an almost completely vertical drop. The sink closed up behind him.

It was a fast ride, and Harry quickly came upon the exit. Crashing out of the pipe, he fell onto a not so soft landing of animal bones with a crunch. Scrambling up quickly, he vanished as many of the bones as possible, making the area much easier to move around in.

The small chamber he was in could be compared to a large well, with circular walls going up into darkness above him. There was a passage directly across from the slide, he remembered, which led to the main chamber. Lighting a lumos with the elder wand, he crept carefully through the hall, careful not to step on the large basilisk skins that littered the floor. He would come back in at some point and pack them up and sell them. Basilisk... _ anything _ was absurdly profitable, and just having the skins lying around like this was the equivalent of bars of gold littered at your feet. 

At the end of the tunnel was a very familiar door with seven snakes entwined around the circular handle.

_ “~open~” _

He crept inside.

The main chamber looked much the same as it had in his last life, it was long, and half flooded, the platform that stretched from the door to slytherins statue was meant to appear suspended in the air, but was now just a foot of water away from getting flooded. He looked over the side of the platform, finding that the water had flooded roughly fifty feet of the chamber. The statue of Salazar appeared to be just his head, but under the water was his upper body and arms, completely submerged and almost completely covered in moss.

Snake sculptures lining the walk were in a similar situation, with just the head visible, and the body and tail creating structurally sound pillars connecting the platform to the floor were all submerged.

_ I wonder if i could find a drainage pipe of some sort? _

_ I never could, I believe a pipe burst at some point to cause the flooding. _

Walking along the platform, he came closer to Slytherin’s head, the statue was huge, with his eyes being about the size of Harry's torso.

_ “~hey, basilisk, get your lazy ass out here~” _

Tom had once told him that the basilisk was the one to open the statue's mouth, so you could really just say whatever you felt like as long as it was in parseltongue. Harry was taking advantage of that knowledge today.

_ You really shouldn't be agitating him, Harry. _

_ Well maybe the guy’s got a sense of humor, you don't know. _

_ “~Who wakes me from my slumber.~” _

Harry watched, enthralled, as the mouth of Salazar's statue creaked open, and an impossibly long snake slithered out. He remembered suddenly that it might be a good idea to close his eyes till he was sure the snake wouldn't attack him.

He heard a stone crack, and a low, menacing hiss that tapped into a primal side of him that said  _ fucking RUN! _

_ “~ahhhh, hello little speaker, you are quite the bold one. I have not seen a human act so crassly since this school's founding. Tell me, small one, are you of Salazar's blood?” _

Harry was very close to shitting himself, he was sure, _ “~I'm afraid not, I do have his descendant with me though, would you prefer to speak with him? You met him about fifty years ago~” _

The basilisk thought for a moment,  _ “~no, he was an awful bore.~” _

Indignant sputtering from Tom echoed in his skull,  _ “~that's understandable, is it safe for me to open my eyes?~” _

_ “~Oh! Just a moment, let me close my inner lid.~” _

Harry peaked his eyes open, finding that just to be safe, he would make an effort to not meet the snakes eyes anyway.

_ “~I was actually hoping you would let me into the second chamber?~”  _ Harry winced, realizing how crass he sounded at the moment.

_ “~Of course! You are very interesting.~” _

_ “~...is that the only requirement? To be interesting?~” _

_ “~Should there be a different requirement?~” _

He was trying really hard to not laugh his ass off, Tom was muttering unhappily under his breath. Harry followed behind the basilisk as it slithered back into slytherins mouth, now with his eyes open. After marveling at the incredibly detailed molars in the man's mouth, Harry stepped into what appeared to be the Basilisk's nest. It was cavernous and claustrophobic, with uneven walls and a bed of animal furs and underbrush. Harry felt jittery, wanting to get out of the enclosed space as fast as possible.

_ “~this way~” _

Following after the snake quickly, he was led into another pipe of some sort, which twisted over and around in an effort to confuse those who did not know the way, identical pipes branching off even further.

_ If someone did manage to get past the basilisk, they would most certainly get lost. _

Harry agreed with Tom, sticking closer to the snake as he was led further through the passage. There was a faint light at the end of the tunnel as they neared it, and Harry was suddenly stepping out into a tall, expansive library.

_ “~Welcome to the Library of Secrets speaker!~” _

_ “~I’m sensing a common theme.~” _

The basilisk let out a hissed laugh before explaining the library,  _ “~Salazar and his friends worried very much about the persecution of magic that was happening at their time. In an effort to preserve rare and ancient magics, they built the hamber and the library of secrets to keep all the old magics safe. When they first built the library, it was about a third of the size it is now, but they added onto it as more people donated books and scrolls over the years. I was gifted to Salazar by one of the donors to protect the library. I was just an infant at the time, and I have been told that the man who gifted me was a god, showing just how many people cared to protect the things in this room.~” _

Harry was completely floored, and he could feel Tom in a similar state. What sat in front of him was a sprawling library of ancient magics that, for all he knew, _ hadn’t been used since the founding of Hogwarts. _

He felt as though he might cry out of sheer joy, Theo would probably have a coronary. His brain started to catch up to the snake's words.

_ “~What do you mean by a god?~” _

_ “~His name had been Odin, I believe.~” _

Harry stared at the basilisk for a moment, brain still trying to comprehend the sheer amount of knowledge that was in the room with him.

_ “~Odin? As in the all-father? King of Asgard? God of wisdom, divination, and magic? That Odin?~” _

The basilisk looked at him strangely,  _ “~is there a different Odin I was not aware of?~” _

Harry’s face betrayed his surprise, an actual, honest to god…  _ God _ had given the basilisk to the founders? He was still trying to catch up with the fact that the chamber was a group effort by the founders, and was just to protect ancient magics from being destroyed.

_ Did you know all this Tom? _

_...no, I was not aware, though I suppose this explains the basilisk's name. _

This confused Harry further, who turned back to the snake for answers,  _ “~what is your name?~” _

The basilisk raised his head with pride,  _ “~ _ _ Jörmungandr. _ _ ~” _

* * *

**Jörmungandr: Old Norse (Mythos)**

**Also kno** **wn as the Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr is a sea serpent, and the middle child of the Giantess Angrboða and Loki. According to the** **_Prose Edda,_ ** **Odin took Loki's three children-the wolf Fenrir, Hel, and J** **örmungandr- and tossed Jörmungandr into the great ocean that encircled Midgard. The serpent was said to have grown so large that it was able to surround the earth and grasp its own tail. As a result, it received the name of the Leviathan or World Serpent. When it releases its tail, Ragnarok will begin. Jörmungandr’s arch-enemy is the thunder-god, Thor.**

Harry sighed, it was sheer luck that he had found Jörmungandr in his magical creatures book, as apparently the snake had been considered a magical creature and added to the list. It was fascinating to think how the story got twisted, but if Hogwarts and the chamber were both meant to be kept secret from the muggles, it made quite a bit of sense that the tale had been altered in such a way. It certainly raised questions though, did Loki actually father a basilisk, or did he just create the species, since his symbol was a snake?

Leaning back in his chair, Harry contemplated the rest of his visit to the chamber.

_ “~Would you allow me to copy down some of these books? I’d just hate to bring them out of the library~” _

_ Jörmungandr seemed pleased with the idea, “Of course, this library is meant to preserve magic. If you wish to duplicate a tomb's teachings, I would happily allow it.” _

Harry was so thankful that he had gotten the infinite pages enchantment on his new journal, deciding that if Jörmungandr was fine with it, he would just copy the entire bloody library into his book. 

He had at first wanted to get started right away, but soon found that all the books were in either old English or some other old language, and he had eventually left to plan, thanking Jörmungandr for his time. Translation spells existed and would work, and they could be cast without damaging the fragile books. Judging by the size of the library, it would take him decades of constant writing with a translation spell to get it all copied over into his journal, but if he set up the translating spell to work in tandem with his self writing quill... he could set up a sort of assembly line in the library and only need to come down with more ink occasionally to keep it functioning.

_ If you did that, the handwriting would certainly be much better than yours ever could be. _

_ You do realize that we're planning on transferring an entire library filled to the brim with lost magic into one book right? This is huge! _ _   
_ _ Well, I certainly hope you realize how much of a headache it would be to flip through that book if an entire library sat in it. _

That was a good point. Sure, the book doesn't look any thicker from the outside, but you could potentially keep flipping through it for eternity. He had tried it out one night, and was never able to reach the back cover, even though it had appeared that the book hadn't gotten any thicker.

_ Could you enchant it in some way? _ _   
_ Tom considered the request,  _ I could make a table of contents at the beginning, where you look through all the books that are held inside? I could also add an enchantment that allows you to verbally request a certain topic, but that might interfere with the protection charms… _

Tom went off to ponder all the possibilities, leaving Harry even more excited than he was before. 

Standing up, He went over to his trunk, opening the second compartment and pulling out his (currently) blank endless journal. Rustling around further, he got a hold of the self-writing quill, and four large inkwells. He would have to owl order more, but with his newly named black owl Hades, he wouldn't have to worry about borrowing one of the others’.

After leaving the chamber that night, he hadn't been able to get back to sleep, and had instead just decided to research all he could about Jörmungandr without having to go to the library. It was now early morning, and while it was doubtful anyone would be up yet, it couldn't be considered going against curfew to wander the school. He was still awfully suspicious though, considering all the supplies he was carrying, so he shoved it all in his book bag and took it with him, still wearing his invisibility cloak on the walk to the chamber for an extra layer of protection.

_ Can you think of any entrance that is a little closer to the commons, Tom? _

_ I'm afraid not. _

_ Blast. _

After climbing many stairs, falling down the slide, walking along a platform, crawling through the founder of his house’s mouth, and following Jörmungandr through the claustrophobic tunnels once more, Harry reached the Library of Secrets.

It was just as incredible as it had been a few hours prior. Taking the journal out of his bag, he set it gingerly onto a table, letting Tom take over to add the extra enchantments.

_ “~Oh! Is that you, dull heir?~”  _ The snake asked with curiosity, Tom's eye twitched in irritation.

_ “~a pleasure to see you, Jörmungandr~” _

The basilisk quickly wandered off, seemingly bored with him. Tom sighed with irritation and got to the task of adding and perfecting the enchantments. 

_ The table of contents will have to be self updating, luckily all these enchantments work well together, if they didn't I would have to re-web a few and rearrange others. _

_ Mmhm. _

It took another thirty minutes for him to finish all that, but once they switched back Harry was holding his journal with both hands, peering down with awe at its pages, blank and ready to be filled with long lost knowledge.

Setting the journal down on the table again, he momentarily thanked the founders for separating the books and scrolls based on topic. Motioning with his wand, he started levitating several of the first topic onto the desk. Setting up the inkwells and the quill had to be done by hand, and the translating spell had to be cast, but after just ten minutes he was watching with pride as the first book was being carefully translated and written into his journal.

_ You are aware that even like this, translating and copying the entire library could take years. _

_ I'm sure I can find some sort of spell that will speed up the process. Till then though, this will work fine. _

* * *

Draco woke up groggy; halfheartedly pushing Thasin off of his chest and rolling out of bed. Opening his armoire and taking out his school robes. He was awake enough to register that he was grabbing the right clothes, but everything past that was a vague blur.

He started to wake up more in the shower, when the cold water hit his aching back. He let out a sigh of relief, the cool water soothing the ache. Looking over his shoulder, he grimaced at the faint bumps and bruising that littered his upper back . There were two distinct bumps on his back now, barely noticeable through a thin shirt, but the red and purple skin made them stand out with shocking clarity. It felt like he was growing more bones.

Turning off the water, he towled down quickly, taking extra time and care to be as gentle as possible with his back. The balm his mother has been using to soothe the pain had been working well, but he couldn't reach back there on his own, and refused to tell his friends about the strange sores, so he just suffered through it. 

He looked down at the bands on his wrists, they hadn't been doing shite for him, but his father insisted it would be much worse if he took the blasted things off, so they were still firmly in place.

Putting on his uniform, he smoothed out his outer sleeves and left the stall, sending a drying charm at his hair so he could style it immediately. Blaise came in at some point while he was doing that, taking a fast shower and brushing his teeth before leaving for the common room. Theo stumbled in a few minutes after that, splashing water on his face while chewing on a mint, before leaving as well. Crabb and Goyle came in at some point too, but no Harry.

_ Maybe he got up early? _

He left the baths and peaked into the dorm, finding that Harry's bed was in fact empty, and his school bag missing. Frowning in confusion, as the taller boy had always made a point to walk with him to breakfast, he left the dorm and went out into the commons to search for his other dorm-mate.

“Blaise, have you seen Harry?” he questioned the boy, who was rushing through the transfiguration homework that was due that afternoon.

“Harry? Nah, I think he left early.” was his quick reply, not even looking up from his parchment. Draco was getting frustrated, “-but he never leaves early! There has to be something wrong.”

“Calm down mate. You know the guy, he's probably off sulking in a dark corner or cursing the pants off a Gryffindor.”

Draco wasn't satisfied with that though, and stormed out of the common room in a huff, determined to find Harry before school started, breakfast be damned.

The aforementioned buy was currently stepping out of the third floor girls lavatory, holding his invisibility cloak tight around himself. Hurrying at a fast pace, he sped on towards an empty classroom, intent on finding a place free of people to take off and put away his cloak.

Finding one, he dipped into the room, pulling off the cloak and shoving it into his bag.

He left the room, shaking out his outer sleeves and adjusting the collar of his uniform, before speed walking to the nearest set of stairs.

_ If I hurry I can get to breakfast on time. _

He sped around a corner, knocking into someone and sending them sprawling across the floor.

“Ah, sorry-”

“Fuck!”

“Draco?”

“Harry?”

They stared blankly at each other for a moment, before Draco held out his arms in a ‘pick me up off the floor, asshole’ motion. Harry complied, reaching down and lifting the shorter boy into a standing position. Draco made a show of brushing himself off, adjusting his uniform and smoothing out the wrinkles. Harry stood there awkwardly while he did that, tapping his foot.

Draco eventually turned accusing eyes his direction, “-and just where have you been?” 

Harry came up with a lie as fast as possible, “I found a secret corridor on the fourth floor. Must have lost track of time.”

Draco seemed to buy it, rolling his eyes and grabbing Harry by the arm, “come on then, we can still make it to breakfast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that the next chapter has a bit more substance than this one, but I just really wanted to get all my thoughts on the library out in this chapter and by that point it was already the usually length so I didn't add anything else.


	24. Everyone is Entitled to their Privacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is forced to confide his findings of Lockhart's crimes to the Slytherin house, chaos ensues.  
> Three of our main group have side projects that have been taking up quite a bit of their time, much to the annoyance of our dear Malfoy Heir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: while this fic details a lot of mythologically accurate things about Norse mythos, it does make a lot of shit up for the sake of plot. If you're looking for precise historical accuracy, you wont find it here.

September crept into October, and Harry was happy to note that the weather was finally cooling down for autumn. Defense Against the Dark Arts continued to be a joke, with Lockhart acting out his various heroic deeds. Harry used the free-period to compile a case of every inconsistency in the man's books, of which there was a shockingly large amount.

Draco had leaned over to see what he was writing one day, and nearly fell out of his chair in shock. That afternoon at dinner, Harry was forced to share his findings so far with the other second years by an excited Draco.

“Parkinson, what did I tell you. He's a fraud!” Davis was practically vibrating in her seat, shoving the parchment in the other girl's face, which was turning a pleasant shade of magenta.

“What are you going to do with all this mate?” Blaise questioned him, leafing through some of the pages with interest.

“Well, once I've found every discrepancy in his books, I'll send it all to the daily prophet,” Blaise grinned, “then I'll show it all to him and force a confession, whatever that may be.” Blaise grinned wider.

“Great! How can I help?” the Italian boy asked cheerly, completely ready to take part in the greatest prank of the year.

“Hold on a bloody minute, the bet specified that you would do it yourself, it's against the rules to get help!” Draco exclaimed.

“Wait, you lot are _betting_ on this shite?” Theo looked less than impressed with the both of them.

“Well I didn't think he would actually be able to do it! I figured it was just an easy 1,000 galleons.” Draco defended himself, pink dusting his cheeks. Harry said nothing, not feeling an ounce of regret.

“You're betting a 1,000 galleons on… what, if you can ruin the man's reputation?”

“Nah, I'm gonna get him thrown in Azkaban.” The older years had been listening in apparently, as a few of them audibly gasped. Draco blushed further, Theo went white, Blaise cackled, and the girls all looked at him like he was insane.

“Pardon?” Davis finally spoke, her look of disbelief turning into curiosity.

“Well,” he started, “he obviously didn't actually do the things in his books, but there's documentation besides them that those things actually happened, so I can only assume that he obliviated the people who actually did all those heroic deeds and took the credit. That many illegal obliviations will land him in Azkaban for a good two decades at the very least.” 

Open mouthed stares answered him, a few of the upper years started whispering furiously to each other. Parkinson looked as if she might faint.

“Just a theory, might be wrong.” he rounded out, sheepish.

“Bloody hell, mate.” Theo looked and sounded very, very tired.

* * *

A few days later found Harry strolling through stacks of ancient books, all perfectly preserved behind runes carved lovingly into the shelves they inhabited. He had come down to the secret library with a crate full of ink, enough to copy a few hundred of books. Though... considering that Jörmungandr had informed him that the library had a few _thousand_ books, he would be needing to order another shipment. He had the money, so it was fine, and in the end it was absolutely worth it.

He was walking through the shelves now, looking around for something that might interest him. Turning the corner, Harry found himself peering at a small section of a bookshelf labeled ‘elemental magics’. Intrigued, he crouched down, pulling one of the books out and turning to the first page. Finding it incomprehensible, he cast a verbal translator charm and sat back, listening to his own voice read off the first few pages.

**“Elemental magic has long been thought to be magic gifted to the user from the gods, much in the same way a metamorphmagus is gifted the ability to shift their appearance, an elemental is supposedly simply born with the ability. This however, is false.”**

Harry had never heard of elemental magic before, which just cemented the fact that this library held knowledge unknown to anyone for centuries.

**“It is true that not everyone can use elemental magic, for the simple fact that many are too balanced in their temperament. This means that elemental magic depends entirely on one's personality.**

**An example of this would be that one with a fiery temper is able to harness fire. Someone of an airy demeanor would float along in the wind. A wix that was down to earth could move mountains. Those of a cold deposition may harness the ability to send storms of ice at their opponent. So on and so forth.”**

He was floored, a magic that depended purely on a person's temperament? He had never heard of something so… so uncontained! Magic was something that depended on someone's core and their intent, magic depending on something as random as a person's personality was completely unheard of.

_Or perhaps it was just forgotten._

**“Those who wish to master an element must first deeply understand who they are, inside and out. It is often suggested that one should travel the world and find a place that they feel connected to. This idea however, forgets that one's element comes from within, and exterior forces do not help or hinder in the process of mastering it. This author instead recommends deep self reflection to rediscover one's innerworkings, and then intense meditation into the mind's eye, further into one's being and into the ‘core’ of themselves. This author also suggests that a person does not hope for a specific element that they wish to master, as one who is fated for fire will never be able to call on wind. This meaning that your personality is the only dependent on which element you may master, attempting to control a different element is foolhardy and a waste of magical resources and time.”**

Harry was incredibly intrigued by the book, but felt that elemental magic was something that took an awful lot of self reflection and a deeper understanding of your own psyche, which was something he was hesitant to undergo. 

Setting the book back onto the shelf gently, he made a mental note to consider any of his friends who might have a better time with that kind of process. He remembered Draco’s fiery anger and Veela's ability to summon fire, but quickly pushed that thought aside for another day.

Returning to strolling through the shelves, he couldn't help but consider all the people he knew that could potentially master an element. Blaise was out, he had a balance of personality traits that didn't really lend him one way or another. Draco was already set aside for the moment, as Harry wasn't quite convinced the shorter boy didn't already have an inclination towards fire from an inheritance. Luna had great potential for air, breezing through life, but he couldn't see her focusing enough for the meditation supposedly necessary. That's when he realized it: Theo. The boy was driven, willing to do almost everything for the sake of knowledge. He was stiff, and blunt, but not ice cold. If anyone would be able to master an element, Harry would think that Theo might just move mountains.

He stopped suddenly, his feet seemingly sticking to the floor. Looking down in confusion, his eyes widened. He was standing in a large symbol of the deathly hallows that was carved into the stone, the circle and line representing the wand and cloak shining brightly. He tried to pick his feet off the floor, finding with rising panic that he was most certainly stuck.

_“~are you troubled, intriguing one?~”_

He whipped his upper body around, finding that Jörmungandr had slithered up behind him and was watching with interest.

 _“~Jörmungandr! I'm stuck.~”_ He tried to turn further, but his spine was uncooperative, the snake slithered around to face his front.

_“~This shelf has always fascinated those who come here, but none have ever been able to open one of the books. Tell me, intriguing one, are you a descendant of mighty necromancers?~”_

Mouthing ‘what’, Harry turned to the shelf on his left and gasped. It stood out from the other shelves as it was made of an entirely different material, a pale stone that was carved to appear as a shelf. It held roughly 50 books, all impossibly old and absolutely _reeking_ of necromantic magic. He felt his feet become unattached from the floor, and he practically stumbled to the shelf, his hands brushing faintly across the books.

_“~W-who donated these to the library? They don't match the rest...~”_

Jörmungandr nodded his large head, leaning closer, _“~They were added roughly two hundred years after the school was founded. A young man by the name of Peverell had come into the chamber, with another man who spoke the serpent tongue. Through the translator he explained that his brothers had been plagued by death through the books’ use, and he wished to cleanse himself and his family of it.~”_

 _“~Ignotus Peverell?~”_ Harry asked, faintly. The knowledge that the first holder of the invisibility cloak had brought these necromancy books into the library made him shiver, everything felt too perfect, too much of a coincidence.

_“~Yes! Do you know of him?~”_

_Perhaps its Fate?_ Tom asked dryly. Harry felt he might have been talking about the goddess, and he really wouldn't have put it past her.

_“~I’m familiar.~”_

Harry brushed his fingertips along the book spines, carefully reading the titles, stopping quite suddenly when he reached one with an upside down tree illustration on the spine, but no title. Intrigued, he pulled it out, finding that the same illustration was on the main cover.

_Oh my._

_What is it?_

_That's a family tree._

Harry’s breath caught. Books about a specific family's genealogy were held tightly to the chest, it was unheard of to even _show_ it to people outside of the family unless absolutely necessary, to see it among these books in a _library_ of all things…

He gently opened it to the front cover, reading over the Peverell brothers oldest known ancestors, the ones who were long dead but remembered by those who had created the book in the first place. Family trees were self updating, and a family could only make one if they were of the skill and social class to need it. The creators of the book had their memories drawn upon, and all those who came before them that were still remembered would be written down in the first few pages, just their names and lines connecting them. You could tell you reached those who created the book when you found the first people with a face put to the name, as the book started to document a person's facial features and name from conception to the age of 25, which was typically when the book was passed onto the next generation. The three brothers were a few generations after the original creators of the book, but they were hardly the last. Ignotus had a son who he gave the cloak to, this was well known. It showed that the son then had a daughter named-

He stopped, staring uncomprehending at the name Iolanthe Potter nee. Peverell. 

_Well… shit._

Harry started flipping through the book at a fast pace, finding that the cloak was passed down the line of Potters for generations until...there.

He stared, disbelieving at his own name and face. The portrait was him, without a doubt, the large lightning bolt scar too obvious to ignore. He was at the very end of the tree, flipping through the prior few pages, he found with surprise that his grandparents were named Fleamont and Euphemia Potter, and that he had no particularly close relatives, his family having had one child each for a good seven generations.

_Harry… you descended from necromancers._

_Is that what you’ve decided to focus on?_

_Well leech, you tell me, what is the bookshelf in front of you full of?_

It took him a moment.

_Holy shit._

He was standing in front of ancient necromantic texts that were _technically his birthright!_

Springing forwards, he grabbed a few off the shelf, completely forgetting about the deathly hallow symbol that was supposedly keeping him trapped there. He walked right over it, its job seemingly done.

* * *

Theo was holed up in the Hogwarts library, pouring over an old tome, three more waiting patiently next to him. He was writing vigorously onto a piece of parchment, seemingly working hard to write a small book's worth of words before the day was out. He had woken up early and slipped into the great hall for a slice of toast and a cuppa before his friends were awake and able to convince him to go and do something besides read on a Saturday.

He didn't have the time to do anything else, his hunches (as he called them) were _screaming_ at him that he _needed_ to know everything he possibly could about the worship of Norse gods and he couldn't fully concentrate on anything else till he had enough knowledge to stave off the thirst.

Putting the current tome aside for now, he pulled one off the stack next to him and flipped to the table of contents, finding that there wasn't one, he sighed and flipped to the back and found the index; gleaming as much as he could from that, he then flipped to the general area of something that had interested him. He read several pages before picking up his quill again and starting to write furiously.

This was how his day went, with several breaks in between to return the books to their spot and grab more. He was forced out of his chair by Blaise at some point, as the taller boy wordlessly dragged him into the corridor and forced a plate of food into his hands with a goblet of pumpkin juice. He scarfed it down, and handed the plate and goblet back without a word, already turning back to the library.

* * *

Blaise rolled his eyes as the retreating form of Theo disappeared back into the stacks of books. When the boy hadn’t come down for breakfast, he had made a mental note to bring him some lunch. It had always fallen to him to make sure the Nott heir didn't starve to death on one of his research binges, as Harry often disappeared for hours on end and Draco didn't have the ability to drag the boy out of his seat. It was a shame Madam Pince didn’t allow food in the library, or they could just drop a plate near him and trust that he would eat it. Sadly that wasn’t possible, and Blaise was forced to drag the boy out by the collar of his shirt and into the hall to eat a quick lunch.

“Alright, minor chore out of the way, we can get back to color changing charms now, you ready Vic?”

Victoria nodded determinately, little muggle notepad in her hand and ballpoint pen posed ready to write down notes.

* * *

Theo sat back down at his table, already forgetting that he just ate, immersed in his research once again.

**It is theorized that each god specified different things from their worshipers, which has made finding concrete evidence so difficult, as there are such wildly differing reports.**

He paused, quickly reading over the passage again before flipping quickly back to the index. Reading through the source materials, he leapt to his feet and shot off to the religion section, recognizing one of the titles and needing to cross reference the two books.

Practically sprinting through the stacks, he came upon the book quickly, snatching it off the shelf and _actually_ sprinting this time, back to his table. Scrambling into the chair, he threw open the book he just grabbed and flipped furiously through the pages, trying to find one particular passage. Coming upon it suddenly, he eagerly drank up the words.

**Gods of Norse mythos were known for being fairly precise when it came to their desired ritualistic practices. Many gods of old were known to have strong followings of massive groups of people, and ceremonies were general and vaguely similar. Conversely, and in a similar fashion of the tribes native to the Americas, the northern Germanic tribes of the 9th century AD that have been credited as the first worshipers of the Asgardian pantheon, were spread out and differed in opinion on how exactly one was to worship. Their gods emulated that.**

**It had been said that each of the Norse gods had a prophet write out a set of sacred documents that outlined their personal specifications for worship. These supposed documents however have not been proven to have ever existed, and have been widely assumed to be nothing but rumors.**

It didn't have specifics, but it was more than enough for him. Falling back into his chair with a sigh, Theo felt the itch recede, and his mind settled. 

He could only assume that Blaise had to have come upon one of these supposed documents, and was unknowingly (or Merlin forbid, knowingly) about to pledge himself to a random god. There wasn't anything life threatening about that, as gods typically took good care of their followers, but it wasn't very good form, all things considered.

He opened his eyes, exhausted. The last time he had had an insatiable itch was when he was trying to figure out what was up between Harry and Draco. He had eventually come upon soul bonds, and had sent a book to Harry about them for his birthday, but the research had lasted most of the summer. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, those two had nearly killed him with their mysteries. He had been searching the library for weeks after last Halloween, finally coming upon creature inheritances and their effects. He didn't know why his hunches always insisted on him researching these things in relation to his friends, but he felt that eventually he would figure it out. Sighing, he began sorting through all his notes.

* * *

Draco was weaving in and out through the goalposts, feeling a sense of relief from being up in the air. Flint had been forcing them up out of bed early each weekend and they stayed out there till lunch, when they were allowed to go back inside to eat, before having to go back out again. Draco had taken to just having the house elfs make him a sack lunch, having been told where the kitchen was by his mother. Eating in the stands instead of walking all the way back to the school was much easier if you were just going to come back out anyway.

He sighed, weaving out of the goalposts and into open air, swerving upside down and hanging like that for a moment, contemplative. Harry had been a tad distant the last few weeks, running off to some random place in the castle. He had tried to question the other boy about it, but he had been vague, and quickly changed the subject. It worried the boy some, he and Harry had been close since first year, it wasn't like him to not only go off on his own like that but to also not tell Draco why.

Flipping right side up again, he flew lazily around the pitch, contemplating his friend's shift in demeanor. _He doesn't seem unhealthy, just distracted._ It irked him a little (read a lot) that Harry seemed to have something big going on and he didn't want to involve _his best friend_ (Draco, obviously) in it.

Picking up speed, Draco did a somersault and dove, reaching for an imaginary snitch. He neared the ground at an incredible speed, wind in his ears and adrenaline pumping through his veins. Closer... closer… now! Pulling up half a foot away from the turf, he rocketed the other direction, crisscrossing around in complex patterns at breakneck speed. 

Blaise and Theo also had their own little side projects that were carrying them away during the weekend. Theo was holed up in the library almost constantly, researching a northern Germanic pantheon or something. Blaise was off causing trouble with the firstie muggleborn, and was also reading this weird little book in the dorm sometimes. He frowned, that book felt really strange, not benevolent in a dark magic way, but definitely old and dangerous. 

Draco flew a corkscrew pattern in the air, picking up speed and letting the thrill of flying drown out all his worries. At least he didn't have anything strange going on like his friends, at least he wasn't keeping secrets like Harry. He made a sudden stop in the air, remembering the large bumps, bruising, and back pain that he had been hiding for nearly two years. With a frustrated groan, he realized his own hypocrisy.

Well… everyone was entitled to their privacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly think that Harry is hiding the most out of the four boys, but none of the others are exactly innocent in their secret keeping (lol, don't mind the pun), so I found this chapter especially amusing to write.  
> Words of warning, the next two chapters are fairly Draco centric, as the boy needs some love.


	25. Heirs of Great Houses do Not Cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heirs of great houses do not get upset in polite company, and they most certainly do not cry.

**Dear Father-**

**The gold cuffs I received from you for last Christmas have become less and less effective. I have gone to request Madam Pomfrey’s help with the balms that mother had taken to using to relieve the pain, but it still persists.**

**The Madam noted that if my ailment was truly hereditary, it could potentially be fatal if left seriously untreated. I beg that you exert sincerity in my regard, and plead for your speedy reply.**

**-Your heir, Draconis Lucius Malfoy**

**Draconis-**

**I received your letter and have replied accordingly. I regret to inform you that the nature of your ailment is one that is better discussed face to face, and request your patience till Yuletide. Your mother sends well wishes and a more potent balm.**

**-Lord Lucius Malfoy**

Draco tossed his fathers letter aside with an angry groan. Not only was the letter _impressively_ vague, but completely unhelpful. He groaned again, rubbing his face in his hands and making a conservative effort to not burst into tears.

It was the night after the Halloween feast, and he had spent the entire feast trying very hard to not cry in pain, as he was again attempting now. When he had seen his fathers reply sitting on his desk next to a small package, he had hoped it would be something actually bloody useful. Not a bunch of empty platitudes and apologies. His trip to the medical wing the day before had also been _incredibly_ unhelpful, with the mediwitch simply rubbing the balm on his back and sending him away with a pain reliever potion that didn't _bloody work!_

With a shout, he shoved everything off his desk and onto the floor, and stood there heaving his chest for several moments, slowly coming down.

“Alright there, mate?”

He whipped his head around, before sighing tiredly, “this isn't your dorm, Theo.”

Said boy snorted, “it might as well be.”

They looked at each other for a moment, Theo studying him and Draco trying to burn a hole in the other boy's skull with his glare alone. Finally, Theo broke eye contact and moved to Draco’s desk, bending down and starting to methodically pick the parchment and books strewn about the place. Draco took another deep breath as he set them all down on his desk in a neat pile.

“You never read that book I sent you last Christmas.” Odd change of topic.

“My father took it away, said it was inappropriate of you to send it, care to explain?”  
Theo sighed, long and heavy, “Your father seems to be very much stuck in tradition, he likely didn't want you to know sooner than necessary.”

He turned, heading over to Blaise’s bed across from Draco’s and sitting down on it, continuing to talk, “-but that decision was hindering you, so I thought it would be best to send you and Harry copies of the book so you could figure it out by yourself.”

His eyes narrowed, Theo seemed to know an awful lot and had been willfully not saying shit, “-and what exactly does my back hurting have to do with a book of magical creatures?”

Theo seemed surprised, “Your back is hurting?”

“Oh so you seem to know all this shite about my family but not that? Just what is your deal, Nott?” Draco was getting angry again, his fingers clenching around the back of his chair. The other boy ignored that though, seeming to be thinking deeply about something or another.

“Well?”

That seemed to break the other boy out of his thoughts, and he got up to walk over to Harry's side of the room, grabbing a familiar looking book off the desk. It was well worn, and had lots of pieces of parchment and notes stuck into the pages. Theo flipped past all those however, to near the back of the book, and stood there, occasionally flipping though, as Draco got more and more irritated.

“Ahhh, I see.” was finally said.

“What do you see?” Draco demanded, sitting angrily back down in his desk chair, stewing in anger as the other boy came over, worn book in hand.

“I don't want to get between you and your father Draco, but he doesn't seem to be helping you by keeping your heritage secret,” he set the book down on a specific page, pointing to one of the rows, Draco didn't even look at it, glaring heatedly at Theo.

“I get hunches sometimes, and they're almost always right, read this page, will you? It’ll at least answer some questions.” He turned and walked away, leaving a stewing Draco staring at the spot he vacated.

He didn't know how long he sat there, glaring at the floor, but eventually he calmed down enough to turn to the book and begin to read. His eyes drifted to the general direction that Theo had pointed at, eyes latching onto a specific entry.

**Veela-Slavic**

**Veela are commonly described as semi-human magical beings native to Bulgaria, or more precisely the Slavic highlands. Appearing as beautiful women with white-gold hair and pale skin, they have a natural affinity to charm other beings. When angered however, they transform into Harpy-like creatures (see page 744), and have the ability to throw balls of flame from their hands. Veela are well known as the magical creature to most often wed wizards, and due to this it is not uncommon for many old wizarding families to inhibit traits of traditionally Veela heritage, though if these traits are in fact credited to an official creature inheritance is unknown.**

Draco could distantly register the sound of an explosion, a magical outburst rocking the dorm and testing the strength of the school's foundation. He could feel it lashing around him, destroying everything in the pursuit to escape his body while not hurting him. Looking down at his hands, he brought them both up to his face, fascinated as flames danced across his fingers. Warm, but painless. He could feel his anger, but could not react to it. Slowly, he brought his left hand down to the chairs arm rest, watching with detached emotion as it lit aflame. 

There were yells, and some one burst through the door, marching right over to him. He was shaken from his stupor by two long hands coming up and cradling his face, wiping away tears that he didn't know were falling.

He could hear Professor Snape's deep voice behind the person holding his face, speaking in hushed words.

Looking slowly up, his eyes focused for a moment on shockingly green eyes and a very familiar scar, before his vision went black, magic reserves completely exhausted.

* * *

Harry felt the magical outburst before he heard it, and was already out of his seat and up the stairs before anyone else in the common room could register what had happened. He _knew_ that magic, it was around him almost constantly after all. Bursting into the dorm room, he took a moment to take in the carnage before storming over to Draco, who was watching his chair burn with a detached look. His chair was the only thing left to burn really, the room was in shambles. Crouching down to his level, Harry moved mostly on instinct, cupping Draco's face in his hands and whispering calming words. 

“What in Merlin's name happened here.”

“Draco’s had a magical outburst, Professor.”

Snape cursed, before waving his wand in a complex pattern, reversing the damage done to the room and the personal belongings. As Draco's desk was rebuilt, Harry noticed his ‘Every Magical Creature Known’ book also got pieced back together, and drew the correct conclusions.

“Professor,” he whispered quietly to the man, “do you know of any creature blood in the Malfoy line?”

The man went white, and glanced his way, seeing the book almost instantly. Cursing under his breath, the potions professor rubbed a hand tiredly over his face.

“Blast it, Lucius you stubborn fool…” he muttered, almost too quiet for Harry to pick up.

“We need to have him moved to my quarters, Lucius requested if this were to happen he would be called immediately.”

Draco seemed to move slightly, and then slump against him. Maneuvering the shorter boy, he grabbed for his wand to levitate him.

“No need for that Potter, I'll do it.”

He nodded, watching with careful eyes as the man did just that, and walking alongside Draco as he was moved out of the dorm hall and into the commons. Harry was about to follow the professor as he levitated the boy into his adjacent office, until he caught Theo’s suspiciously guilty eyes from across the room. Stopping, he motioned to the boy and headed back to the dorm, a wincing Theo following from a ways behind.

Stepping into the newly reconstructed dorm, he strode over to his book on Draco’s desk. Picking it up, he turned back around, pointing it in Theo’s direction is accusatory. Striding back over to the boy, he practically shoved it into his hands.

“Explain yourself before I break your face.”

Theo winced further, “I didn't think this would happen.”

“Wow, no shit! What, did you think he would just be ok with it?”

Theo rounded on him, “oh so you knew too did you?”

“Of course I did, I'm not a moron, but I'm not so _tactless_ that I would get between a pre-teen in the middle of a budding creature inheritance and his father like this!”

Theo glowered, standing firm, “it was the right thing to do and you know it.”

“Maybe, but oftentimes the right thing is just as bad as the wrong one.” he thought back to Dumbledore's ‘for the greater good’ gimmick, drawing parallels quickly.

“I had a hunch!”

“Since when is having a hunch a good argument!”

“Since it was me having the hunch!”

“YOU'RE STUPID SEER HORSESHIT IS NOT A GOOD EXCUSE TO HURT DRACO!”

“I DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT HIM!”

“Should I come back later?”

They both whipped their heads to the door, glaring heatedly at Blaise, who was standing there awkwardly.

“Ah great, you're here to scold me too eh?” Theo snapped, looking very close to tears anyway, worried for his friend. Harry glowered, too upset to do much of anything.

The Italian boy chuckled a bit, apparently finding the idea of him scolding anyone amusing, “nah, Professor Snape sent me to say that Draco’s awake already.”

Harry practically bolted from the room, sprinting down the stairs, skipping three steps at a time. Swerving around them, he bolted to the side door leading to the Professors Quarters and slammed through the doors, causing Snape to curse rather rudely.

“Draco?”

“Hum?”

He let out a relieved sigh, shutting the door gently before collapsing onto the floor next to the couch that Draco was laying on, studying the boy’s bare back with extreme worry. He had two large bumps on his shoulder blades, and severe bruising that lended him to also having a bit of bleeding centered several skin levels below the surface, close-ish to the muscle. It looked extremely painful, and Harry felt an ache in his chest at the sight.

“Bloody hell.”

“Language, Mr. Zabini.”

Blaise and Theo had arrived, and stood a few feet behind where he was sitting, also staring at Draco’s back.

“I didn't want you lot to know.” the boy spoke quietly, his face pressed into his pillow.

“Mate, I'm no mediwizard, but that looks like a bit of a medical emergency.” The other two boys told Blaise to shut his trap for five bloody minutes.

“Mr. Malfoy, I have contacted your father, he will be arriving by floo shortly.” It seemed the professor had a private floo that he was allowed to use, Harry noted distantly.

“Just bloody brilliant, can't even give me a few minutes-” the rest was incomprehensible as Draco turned his face further into his pillow.

The sound of a fire flaring alerted them to Lord Malfoy’s arrival.

“Severus, where is my-” he stopped mid sentence, taking in the scene before him. His eyes glanced over each of them before eventually settling onto Harry, who he sneered at quite impressively.

“Harry Potter is it? I was not notified of you being acquainted with my heir, if you would remove yourself from the room immediately-”

Harry cut him off, not giving a shit anymore, “if you want to be a prat to me that's just fine, but your son is currently in a great deal of pain, so if you could focus your attention onto him for the moment I would greatly appreciate it.”

“How _dare_ you speak to me in such a manne-”

Harry leapt to his feat, eyes glowing dangerously, “How dare I? I am the heir to _two_ great houses, one of which out ranks yours. I am _second_ in line to the Black lordship, as the current heir is _rotting in Azkaban._ I hold far more public sway than you do, so if you really want to pull rank, I will be _happy_ to drag you across hot coals in the press, but your son is far more important to me than some pathetic little bit of posturing. So how about you focus on him, or do you care that little about your family?”

There was a moment of shocked silence before Draco burst out into great peals of laughter, Blaise following soon after. Snape, he could tell, was trying very hard to act indignant, and failing quite spectacularly. Lord Malfoy's face went bright red, and he stiffly marched over and stood over him menacingly. Harry stood his ground.

“I request a private word with my son, if that suits your needs, _Heir Potter?”_

Harry felt that he had proven his point, and the three boys were shepherded out of the room by Snape, who closed the door behind him with a thud.

He turned stern (amused) eyes on the three boys, who were standing in a line, innocent as could be. “Get out.”

They ran off, Blaise patting Harry on the back in a congratulatory manner and Theo finally letting himself laugh hysterically.

* * *

“He’s my best friend, father. Please make an effort with him.”

The man grimaced, pulling a chair up next to the couch he was lying on, “he certainly took me by surprise. I was not expecting… nevermind, how do you feel.”

“Extremely cross with you.” 

The Lord Malfoy chuckled quietly, carding his hands through his son's hair. There was a stark difference between how he acted towards his son with company and with just family, and it was most telling now. ”You've found out then?”

“Why wasn't I told years ago.”

“Well traditionally-”

Draco rolled his eyes, “the real reason if you please.”

His father glared, “enough cheek, Draconis.” He then sighed, looking exceptionally tired. “I didn't want to burden you with the knowledge of a creature's inheritance so young. It is a great shame to have, and the Malfoy family has been keeping theirs a secret for over eight generations. It was for your reputation as well as your peace of mind. I see now though that that was foolish, you should have been told this summer at the latest.”

Draco contemplated the apology, his fathers words were truthful, if sugar coated. If the public got wind of a creature inheritance among any pure blood family, said family was almost immediately shunned from polite society. His life could very well be ruined if someone told, which he supposed made sense to the reason why he was in his head of house quarters instead of the hospital wing.

“I'm still cross.”

Lord Malfoy half laughed half sighed, “as you should be, but I beg that you understand my reasoning, Draconis.”

“I do father, but I'm still upset that you had not told me, even if your reasoning was sound.”

He nodded, “good, hold fast to your beliefs if you know they are right.”

Draco rolled his eyes and groaned, his father laughed, “stop squeezing life lessons into our conversations!” he only laughed harder.

Severus Snape just finished obliviating Poppy Pomfrey of any memory of Draco coming to her for his back. It never hurt to be safe, and the mediwitch had an awfully loose tongue around the headmaster in regards to her patients private information. Leaving the Hospital wing, he set his face into his trademark sneer, scaring off younger years as he passed.

_Good, let the little dunderheads scatter like cattle._

“Ah, Severus, there you are.”

_Blast._

“Minerva, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

She huffed, seemingly put out, “Albus needs you in his office for some reason or another, says that you used the emergency floo?”

_Blast blast blast!_

“Hmm. Yes, one of my students had a family emergency, the details are quite personal I'm afraid.”

She nodded, understanding that other people were entitled to their privacy, unlike a certain twinkly eyed headmaster.

After thanking the transfiguration professor, Severus altered course to the headmasters office. Falling into a light meditation, he prepared his occlumency walls for a potential (almost guaranteed) attack from Dumbledore.

Riding the staircase, he strengthened his nerve, stiffening his spine and setting his face in a firm expression of emotionless disinterest. He fooled the Dark Lord during his prime, he could fool a meddling old coot just as easily.

“Good evening Severus, do come in.” Albus was just as jolly as always, his placating smile out in full force and completely ineffective.

“Headmaster, may I ask what this impromptu meeting is entailing?” His face was stone, eyes betraying nothing of the Malfoy Heir’s unfortunate heritage.

“Ah yes… I noticed that you used your emergency floo? Whatever for?”

“I'm afraid one of my students had a family emergency, and needed contact with their guardian immediately.” He spoke carefully, not giving away any specifics beyond generalities.

“Oh that's quite severe, who was it?”

Severus’ eye twitched, “I'm afraid that confidentiality exists, Headmaster.”

He felt a brush at his occlumency shields, they held strong, “yes, quite right… well I apologize for taking up your time then.”

“Hm. I'll take my leave then.”

* * *

Draco joined them in the dorm about thirty minutes after they were shoved out of Snape's quarters. He had been given the more potent balm and a numbing agent, which he said relieved quite a bit of the pain. The four of them were currently sitting in a circle on the floor, waiting for someone to speak.

Harry decided to break the silence, “Secrecy vows?” Blaise and Theo nodded determinedly, and Draco looked at them confused.

“What for?”

Blaise rolled his eyes, “to be certain this is all kept a secret, you great lump.”

Draco was even more confused, “I trust you lot, you don't have to-” Harry cut him off.

“I, Hadrian James Potter, do hereby swear that I will keep any secret confided to me by Blaise Zabini, Theodore Samuel Nott, and Draconis Lucius Malfoy, and will henceforth never share with anyone but the three listed what I may or may not be confided in by them, till the day my soul departs from this life into the next, so mote it be.” a great flash accompanied the vow.

“Bloody hell-”

“Alright Harry!”

“A-ha!”

Blaise was soon to follow, finding great amusement in Draco's flabbergasted face, Theo right behind him. After two more flashes of light it was quiet for a moment, as they looked expectantly at Draco, who was trying _very_ hard not to cry now. He raised his wand and shakily recited the vow as well, and they all cheered and passed around hugs and pats on the back (gently, in Draco's case) and they all most certainly did not cry, because heirs of great houses do not cry, thank-you-very-much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly... this was one of my favorites to write, just really a lot of fun.


	26. Secrets Don't Keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter comes to a quick decision while Albus Dumbledore plots. Theodore Nott has a coronary and Hermione Granger worries her head of house.

The first of November rounded the bend, and the four second year Slytherin boys woke up feeling lighter. Well, Harry still felt much the same, but Draco felt lighter, which was contagious... you get the idea.

It did raise questions for Harry though, as he did have quite a few skeletons still in the closet, and the elephant in the room was just waiting for one of them to spill another nasty little secret. Harry didn't think he could get through all his secrets without getting in the very least a few teeth knocked out by an irate Blaise, and felt that it would take a good amount of careful planning and pure nerve to maneuver his secrets into the known for the group, and made adjustments in his plans to do so. 

Harry Potter was not the only one planning however, as one Albus Dumbledore had come across some very worrying information the night prior. He had not fully trusted his potion master for many years, but when he had blatantly refused his employer necessary information… Well, what else could he do but use the seeing glass? It had raised quite a few worrying questions. The bat of the dungeons was loyal to himself and himself alone, which was a very worrying thing indeed. More worrying however, was his trust in one Lucius Malfoy, one of the most obvious Death Eaters to still weasel out of prosecution. 

Dumbledore frowned deeply, he took great advantage in having a spy among the Death Eater ranks, but if that spy was able to be swayed one way or the other… he frowned further, it would be necessary to ensure Severus’ unfortunate end as soon as the time allotted. In the coming war he would be extremely beneficial, but after a certain time he would expend that usefulness.

He sat back with a sigh, how to do it though? It would be immediately suspicious if the man was killed by another Death Eater, as he was supposed to be on their side, but having him killed by an order member would also raise eyebrows.

_Tricky… tricky…_

That was the difficulty with killing someone in the middle of a conflict while trying to get away scot free, neither side could be put completely out of suspicion. Alas, the second war was a few years away yet, he had time in spades to plan the man's demise.

He smiled lightly, before getting up from his seat to get ready for the day, he had a Wizengamot gathering to get to, he was the Chief Warlock after all.

* * *

**Lava Bear-North America**

**The lava bear (also known as sand lapper, dwarf grizzly, and North American sun bear) is a magical variety of the American black bear. It is found in the lava beds of south central Oregon, and is described as a very small bear with wooly light brown fur. The few lava bears that have been caught or killed were a little larger in size than that of a badger. The bears are known for an elaborate pattern of cracking lava across their joints, which have been theorized to be for venting out the intense heat at which the bears function. Many magical American tribes in the Oregon region consider the lava bears to be more elemental spirits than organisms, and consider them protectors of the earth.**

Harry crossed the Lava Bear out of his book with an eye roll. He had been relieved to find that his book had been completely restored to how it was when he last had it, that being well worn and full of notes shoved into pages. The lava bear was automatically disqualified, primarily because it lived in a hot ecosystem, and secondarily because it was an utterly ridiculous creature, if cute sounding.

Harry glanced to his makeshift conveyor belt that was currently translating and copying down its 32nd book. Tom had been right when he said that it would be slow going, and he was honestly impressed that it had gotten this far in exactly a month of work, considering that he started on the 1st of October. He sighed, it was still taking awfully long though, he would have to start looking into methods of speeding up the process if he ever hoped to get it finished before he graduated, much less before June came around and school was out. 

He grimaced, feeling that next year wouldn't be very open to cutting him some slack, being the year after his first transformation on his 13th birthday, so he didn't expect that he'll have much time to bring down fresh ink every weekend.

Leaning back in his chair, he contemplated the day before. Draco’s magical outburst had nearly sent him bearing down on the Lord Malfoy, if he didn't have the occlumency walls he did he very well might have torn the man to bits. That was most certainly _not_ a normal reaction to your best friend being hurt. Or was it? Harry certainly didn't know, in his last life his best friend ended up being paid to hang out with him, so he didn't exactly have the whole loyalty shtick all worked out.

Getting up out of his chair, he picked up his book and motioned over Jörmungandr, who was lying around a shelf of ancient worshiping practices… wait.

Circling back around, Harry moseyed up to the shelf, taking a closer look at the scrolls and books. Opening one, determining that it was in Latin, he put it back. It took a lot of grabbing and checking for him to find something vaguely Norse, and the book after that was most certainly northern Germanic in nature.

_If I'm going to begin being more truthful with my friends, why not start by giving Theo an early birthday present?_

* * *

Hermione Granger was marching determinedly up the stairs to the headmaster's office. She was extremely angry and did not think for a moment that the headmaster couldn’t spare time for her when it was so obviously important!

Banging on the door a few times, she tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the tell tale ‘come in!’ to grant her access. However, she got no such call, and with an impatient harrumph, stormed in anyway. To her raising frustration, the headmasters office was most certainly empty, except for an old looking bird that had seen much better days. 

Standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed and eyebrows drawn, Hermione Granger continued to be extremely cross.

After standing there for several minutes, stubborn, a door finally opening made her spring into action.

“Headmaster! The most horrid thing just happened-”

“Miss. Granger! Good merlin what are you doing in here?”

To Hermione’s dismay, the person who opened the door was in fact her head of house.

“No No No! Profession, I _need_ to speak with the headmaster absolutely immediately!”

McGonagall was flummoxed, the girl was often quite sharp, but on occasion she would have bouts and moods that completely betrayed her mind. Thinking fast, she gently maneuvered the girl onto a chair, pushing the calming drought laced lemon drops to the girl. Yes, Minerva was quite aware of the drugged candies, but thought that it was more of a way to calm people, rather than for manipulation. If she knew what their intended use was, she would likely grab the headmaster by his beard and throw him across the great hall.

Sighing faintly, she began to attempt to sooth the girl, “now Miss. Granger, the headmaster is away on important Wizengamot business, as he always is on Sundays. As the standing Deputy Headmistress, I would be more than happy to help you with anything you need, but please do not make it a habit of storming into the headmasters office.”

“No, I can't discuss this with you professor, please send an owl to the headmaster insisting that he come back to the school right away.”

Minerva eyebrows raised marginally. The girl was sometimes quite irrational yes, but this was veering into curse territory.

“I'm sorry Miss. Granger, but that is quite impossible. I'm afraid you will have to wait to discuss whatever it is you need to discuss with him after lunch. My apologies.”

The girl appeared to be growing more and more agitated, and Minerva settled in for an extremely befuddling conversation which ended with the young girl yelling that ‘you aren't my mum!’ before running out of the office. Leaving the poor professor with her head in her hand and the sudden wish for a glass of whiskey.

* * *

Harry sauntered out to the quidditch pitch, knowing that his friends were currently out there helping Draco with bludger dodging. He had been nervous about it since the blond’s back was still very sensitive, but the others convinced him that they wouldn't use real bludgers, and it would help him when it came to real games anyway, so it was a win win. Harry trusted them to be careful, and went off with his shrunk crate of ink to the library to restock the supplies.

Walking onto the pitch, he looked up to the sky, finding three human shaped specks flying around sporadically. Sighing, he hunted down one of the school brooms and quickly took off, flying with the ease of a natural who had been honing his skills for years (because he was, and he had). 

“Evening chaps.”

“Bloody- Harry? I thought you had run off to some random corner to sulk?” Blaise was as infuriatingly cheeky as always.

“I came upon an early birthday present for Theo.” he replied, holding up the book.

The aforementioned boy zipped over to his side, practically snatching the book from his hands with a greedy look on his face.

Blaise rolled his eyes, resuming his throwing at Draco, who went back to dodging. Harry drifted a ways away from Theo, watching with a mischievous smile as the boy appeared more and more flabbergasted by the book. He eventually used some sort of translation charm, finally able to read the text. It only took a moment before he whipped his head up to Harry, a hungry look in his eyes.

“Where did you get this.” the tone made Blaise and Draco pause and look over, Harry’s smile widened.

“Hadrian James Potter where the ever loving _fuck_ did you get this book.”

Harry drifted further away, smile more of a manic grin at this point.

**“Harry!”**

He zipped off, fast as a bullet, Theo following a ways behind.

He heard Draco whoop and join in on the chase, Blaise not fast behind. It was certainly fun, and Harry hadn't been on a broom in a good while, well over a decade and a half, but the muscle memory came back quickly. The fact that the school broom was particularly shitty did well to mask his real skill, but the other three could easily tell he was an extraordinary flier.

Making a sharp turn around a goal post, Harry altered course, flying between Blaise and Draco and disrupting their formation. Draco hollered out an ‘oi!’ and made chase, quickly catching up on his vastly superior Nimbus 2001. Harry did a barrel roll over the boy, veering off the the right of him and back the way he came, but Draco was expecting it, and maneuvered himself just right and grabbed ahold of Harry’s ankle, making the boy stop in fear of accidentally pulling the smaller boy's shoulder out of its socket.

“Gotcha!”

Theo nearly barreled into him, still clutching the book to his chest protectively. For the sake of Theo’s peace of mind, they all floated down to the turf below, the bookworm rearing up for the rant of the century.

“Alright Theo cough it up, what's so special about this book.” Blaise stumbled off his broom, mock-glairing at the boy as he practically caressed the tomb in his arms.

“What's so special?! What's so special about this book, Zabini, is that it details Norse worshiping practices from the 9th century.” Blaise appeared suddenly extremely interested, and turned a similar look of hunger as Theo’s towards Harry, who started to laugh.

“So you're probably wondering where I've been running off to each weekend?”

The looks he got were answers enough.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore returned to the school a happy man. The Wizengamot session had gone well, though it had been an awful bore. Stepping out of his private floo, Albus dusted off his robes of any soot. Looking up, he was surprised to find Minerva sitting at his desk, looking very put out.

“Minerva? What is the matter?” he might as well placate his deputy’s worries, whatever they may be.

“Oh Albus, I really worry about Miss. Granger.” This confused the man, Hermione Granger was the second best student in her year, the enigma that is Harry Potter being the first.

“Whatever for?”

His deputy sighed, rubbing her face tiredly, “she has strange bouts of attitude that seem completely unlike her, I worry sometimes that a rude student is repeatedly cursing her with an irrationality jinx of some sort.”

The headmaster's eyebrows rose comically, he had indeed noticed times in which she seemed unhinged or slightly irrational in her actions, but he had written it all off as age appropriate. The transfiguration professor had a very good point however, the changes in mood were almost unnatural, perhaps she _was_ being cursed?

“Shall we bring her to the medical wing and have Poppy check on her?” he questioned carefully, wondering how to go about this.

“No no, I'm not entirely sure this isn't just how she is, perhaps it's one of those muggle ‘mental illnesses’?”

He nodded distantly, considering the possibility. Muggleborns had often cited certain muggle mental illnesses as being harmful, he didn't know the specifics of them, but perhaps she was indeed suffering from one? If that was the case, was it contagious in some way? He frowned, if the ailment was truly contagious, perhaps it would be prudent to quarantine the girl in case she spread it to the other children.

He shared these worries with his deputy. Mentally questioning if the girl was still fit to be his pawn, thinking farther ahead he wondered how those mental diseases progressed, were there cures? Minerva seemed adamant about giving the girl time however, not wanting to jump to conclusions.

“I'm sure there are plenty of possibilities for what is wrong, for now it is best to simply observe her and try to get a better understanding of her changes of temperament.”

He easily agreed, glad that they were taking a cautious approach to the issue.

* * *

Harry led his friends into the third floor girls lavatory, shushing them as they giggled nervously about being in the girls loo. Rolling his eyes, he quickly locked the door to ensure privacy, and turned to them with a serious expression. To reveal one secret he would first have to reveal another, but with the vows they had taken he felt much more confident in revealing the parseltongue. He was thankful that Myrtle was nowhere to be seen.

“Now, I'm sure I can trust your discretion in this?” he questioned. They all gave him looks, he half smiled half grimaced. 

“Over this way then.”

Leading them to the sink, he tapped his finger to the snake inscription, letting them all get a good look at it before whispering _“~open.~”_

Theo nearly jumped out of his skin, and Draco looked at him with horror. Blaise started cackling, “that was bloody _brilliant-_ oh what the-”

They all snapped their heads back to the sink, which had creaked open revealing a much cleaner slide than the first time he had come here.

“I'll see you lot at the bottom.” Was his only comment, before he slipped into the slide and down into the darkness, hearing Blaise clamber in behind him.

He waited at the bottom for just a moment before Blaise came tumbling out, followed by Theo and Draco who were practically on top of each other. They all landed in a heap, and Harry fretted about Draco's back for a moment before the shorter boy insisted he was fine.

“That's it, you better explain a few things before we go any further with this mate.” Theo was the voice of reason once again.

“Well, I'm a parselmouth, naturally.” Draco mouthed ‘naturally’ with exasperation. “-and I happened upon the Chamber of Secrets one day, apparently it can only be opened by a parseltongue, funnily enough. I expected to get murdered or something by the creature, but he’s actually quite pleasant, and showed me the library.”

Theo leveled him with a hard look, “Explain.”

“Why tell if I can show?” he grinned again, having an incredibly large amount of fun with this, before lighting a lumos and heading through the tunnel. The other boys behind him scrambling after, various curses and one _‘and I thought I was the prankster’_ accompanied them.

When the boys made it out into the main chamber, he let his friends marvel at the founder of their house’s statue. Walking confidently up to it, Harry called out for his basilisk friend.

_“~Oi, Jörmungandr, I brought that bookworm friend with me… and a few others.~”_

His human friends jumped at the parseltongue, and turned to the statue with shock as the basilisk slithered out of it. Draco almost immediately started screaming, Theo not far behind.

_“~they are awfully loud, intriguing one.~”_

_“~To be fair, you are a 70ft long basilisk, I’d say it's warranted.~”_

The two boys settled down when they realized Jörmungandr was quite tame, and curiously came closer, Blaise was already trying to climb him, much to the snake's amusement.

_“~I like the Loki worshiper, intriguing one.~”_

Harry put aside the nickname for now, opting to introduce the basilisk to his friends.

“Alright you lot, this is Jörmungandr the basilisk, play nice.”

Blaise was most certainly not playing nice, but the snake took it all in stride. Slithering around the platform, carting Blaise along as the boy’s massive steed, Harry figured Jörmungandr was really enjoying all the people coming down.

_“~Jörmungandr, I hate to spoil the fun, but my friend would really love to see the library.~”_

_“~Oh! Yes of course, off you go little Loki worshiper.~”_

“Oi!” without prompting (for him at least) Blaise was gently slid off the snake and onto the floor, “what was that about?”

“He's taking us into the library now,” he answered.

Theo’s neck snapped around so fast Harry could hear a crack, “The library?” a hungry gleam in his eye.

“Mhm, you'll see.”

Theo was the first to crawl into the statue's mouth, and also the first into the library, having run off ahead at the first sign of light. Harry took a moment to laugh at his flabbergasted face as the Nott heir took in the expansive library.

“Welcome to the Library of Secrets! The four founders built this place as well as the chamber to hold knowledge of all the magics that were being threatened by the witch hunts, and an awful lot that were just falling out of practice. From what Jörmungandr’s told me, people had been coming in and adding books for a good 300 years after the school was founded, but as parseltongue got less prominent the chamber and library were slowly forgotten, and the legend about it becoming twisted.”

Draco and Blaise were listening with interest, Theo was practically frothing at the mouth, his chin on the floor.

“I've taken it upon myself to copy all the books into one that's been enchanted with infinite pages, which is over on that table. The quill is self-writing, and I've got an automatic translator spell going since all the books are at least 600 years old. All I really have to do is order and bring down more ink.”

“Can… can I…?” Theo was at a loss for words.

“Go on.” he made a shooing motion, the boy was off like a rocket, laughing maniacally as he ran through the stacks.

“Mental, that one.” muttered Blaise, with a hint of a smile on his face, “this is pretty brilliant though mate, mind if I run off as well?”

He made another shooing motion, turning his attention to Draco, who seemed intrigued but in pain.

“Your back was hurt in the fall-” “No it wasn't.” “-don't lie Draco, let me take a look at it.”

The shorter boy huffed, walking over to the nearest chair, taking off his shirt with a poorly concealed wince. Harry winced as well, the landing must have kicked the growth up again, there was more bruising and it really seemed like his back was about to burst open.

Silently, Harry cast a cooling charm, and a few mild healing charms meant to fix some of the bruising. Mentally kicking himself for letting Draco go down that stupid slide, he summoned the balm from Draco’s desk, gently spreading it on the boys back.

“I’m sorry Draco.”

“It's not your fault.”

“It, quite literally, is my fault.”

The shorter boy didn't have much to say to that, and they listened quietly to Theo’s occasional excited squealing.

“I'm sure there's something in the library about creature inheritance as well, but I haven't been able to find anything.” Harry spoke after a few minutes of silence, wrapping a loose bandage around Draco's back and shoulders.

“...Why?”

“Pardon?”

“Why have you been looking for things on creature inheritances?”

_This is too many secrets revealed in one day, mate._

“Theo sent us both those books last Christmas.”

Draco sucked in a breath, but otherwise kept quiet.

“Holy Shit!” there was a distant noise from the other side of the library.

“That sounded like Theo.” Draco turned his head to the sound of the noise, chin bobbing like a bird.

“Should we go see what he found?” Harry questioned as he stood back, making sure the bandages were coated in cooling charms.

_“Holy Shit!”_

“Probably.”

Harry would worry about revealing everything later, for now he would focus on his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy! I've been hemming and hawing over what to have in this chapter, it could have ended up twice as long as this really, but I decided to sift a few topic out to put into the next chapter, to make sure the story can still be followed.


	27. Family is Most Often Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many people go about the day, testing the waters and ignoring sound advice.

Nicolas Flamel sat angrily in his office, glairing heatedly at the scared man across from him. When he had found that the philosopher's stone had been stolen, he had been exceptionally angry, but when he found that he only had three decades worth of the elixir of life in storage he was even more irate. The letter five months later from the ministry of magic in Britain confirmed his fears that Albus had stolen it. He had replied quickly that he had three decades left of elixir, so if they didn't want an incredibly cross immortal with too much time on his hands to come up there and steal it right back, then they were going to send someone with it posthaste.

It had taken them almost a year to finally return it.

Muttering in French, he had let the grizzled man hobble into his home, and let him watch with that weird eye of his as Nicolas confirmed that it was indeed his stone.

“Now, I want you to take this letter to your stupid minister and tell him that I don't want a  _ thing _ to do with his stupid country for another two decades in the least.”

The man grunted and got up to leave. Nicolas watched him go with a frown, the ministry may have taken nearly a year to return his stone, but the one who had assured that it was found had been quite prompt. A young boy had owled him a letter after Yuletide, explaining how he inadvertently caused the ministry to find the stone. He had at first brushed it off, not particularly caring as his stone was still not returned to him, but then he had recognized the name.

_ Hadrian Potter… _

Nicolas’ frown deepened as he thought, the boy was well known in Britain as having survived the killing curse as an infant, which was certainly an impressive feat considering he was not a drinker of the elixir of life. That was not what interested him with the boy though. No, he had heard Albus speak of the child many a time, and not once had he brought up the boy's parentage. His eyes narrowed, he had researched the Peverell line extensively in his pursuit for immortality, and he had found quite quickly that the Potters were the last true descendants of the line. He hadn’t known that Hadrian Potter was the last in the line of  _ those  _ Potters, and he didn't doubt that Albus was aware.

He rose from his chair, picking the stone up and making his way to its proper place. Settling the stone safely behind an enchanted glass case, he sighed, incredibly tired. Not only did he lose any trust he had in Albus, but he had no idea how to proceed in regards to the Peverell descendant. Walking over and settling back down in his chair, he pulled out a piece of parchment and got to work, starting to draft a letter to the young Potter heir. It would not take many years yet before the child’s ancestry came to light and for the public to swarm him, Nicolas must make haste to get to the boy first.

* * *

Harry and Draco made their way to the back of the library, following the occasional shouts of Theo. Harry hadn't been back to that part of the library, and was curious to see what the boy had found.

Turning a corner, they were temporarily frozen in place at the sight in front of them.

“Are those…?”

“Pedestals for the founder's relics!” Theo squealed, not all that upset that the objects weren’t currently on display.

It was really quite obvious what the pedestals were for, they were color coded after all, and one was shaped to fit a sword and scabbard. The question of course, was what the bloody hell they were doing down there.

“Do you reckon they were placed here after the founders died?” Harry questioned, confused with the discovery.

“No, they were built into the stonework, they have to have had some sort of purpose.” Theo replied, crouching in front of the Ravenclaw pedestal and poking the ground it sat on.

“Oi Theo what're you on about- what the hell are those?” Blaise had finally decided to figure out what all the yelling was about, and was quite confused with the current activities.

“They look like pedestals for the founders' artifacts.” Replied Theo.

“Wicked.”

Harry walked over to the pedestals to take a closer look. They were most certainly made out of the same dark, almost black stone as the rest of the library, but were obviously under some extremely stubborn protective wards, as they were perfectly smooth, circular pillars that came up to his waist, the perfect viewing height. They were decorated with plush colored pillows, each of which having the house's second color as trimming. There was no doubt of what they were, but what their purpose was? Harry couldn't even begin to theorize on that.

“Maybe Jörmungandr knows something about them?” Draco pondered, poking around the pedestals as well. 

“I'll go grab ‘im.” Blaise ran off before Harry could exclaim  _ ‘you cant even communicate with him!’.  _ Watching his retreating form, exasperated, Harry turned back to the pedestal in front of him; which was the Hufflepuff one going off of the yellow and black coloring. Intrigued, he reached out and grasped the decorative pillow, trying to pull it off of the pedestal... it didn't budge. Frowning, he tugged harder, attempting to dislodge it from the spot it lay.

_ “~That is a futile effort, intriguing one.~”  _ Jörmungandr had arrived, carrying a very happy Blaise along on his head.

_ “~What are these used for?~”  _ He grunted, giving one last tug before stumbling backwards, giving up.

_ “~I am not sure, but none of the necessary objects have ever been placed onto the pedestals, so perhaps once that happens we will know.~” _

Harry winced.  _ Easier said than done.  _ Bellatrix Lestrange's vault was a bitch to break into, and the sword was still firmly in the sorting hat. Before, he would have just taken the damned thing out, but he wasn't much of a Gryffindor anymore, and he doubted the hat would be willing to part with it for his sake. The diadem would be the easiest, but the locket was currently tucked away in 12 Grimmauld Place, also very much out of his reach.

“What's he saying?” Theo broke him from his thoughts.

Sighing, Harry went back to studying the pedestals, “he said that if we place all four of the founder's artifacts onto the pedestals something might happen, but he doesn't know what.”

Blaise scoffed, “right, because we can just mosey into someplace and nab the things, they've been missing for centuries!”

The others groaned, Harry nodded, thinking hard. He could get to the diadem, but there was no telling if the horcruxes would have a negative effect on the pedestals and have the objects rejected in some way. Remembering something from the summer, he quickly questioned Tom.

_ Oi, snake face, you absorbed the diary right? _

Tom replied to his unasked question,  _ I have been making an effort with the other horcruxes, but they have to consent to the absorption and there is no one I distrust more than myself, it has been slow going. _

_ Brilliant. _

Rubbing his cheek with his hand, Harry considered his options. None of them were particularly good, and none of them involved being able to get anywhere near the sword until Dumbledore was out of the picture, and even then there were minimal possibilities of the hat handing it over to them, four Slytherins.

“Well, considering how unlikely it is that we’ll be able to find even one of the artifacts, I say we put this on the back burner for now.” Theo to the rescue once again. Quickly agreeing with the boy, Harry turned away from the pedestals, also putting them to the back of his mind. He had enough things going on to worry about a few decorative displays that may or may not have other uses.

* * *

**Saturn is bright tonight. Your fathers death is distant, but not distant enough. Karma has delayed but will not deny, school is paramount. Tell me, boy, do your eyes ever burn?**

Harry had been making a small amount of effort to understand the centaur’s words since that one night in first year, but he hadn't tried all that hard till tonight. After leaving the chamber with his friends he had felt jittery, there were still so many mysteries to uncover while also trying to come up with a workable plan to topple Dumbledore in the coming years. If he didn't figure  _ something  _ out and soon, he would lose it, of that much he was certain.

Harry looked back down at the words with a grimace, after his last full conversation with Tom in September, he had a sneaking feeling about what ‘father’ Bane had been referring to. Tom’s death didn't seem to be literal though, the man was pretty much dead already. Maybe it meant Dumbledore finally admitting he was dead and it was like a… passing from people's conscious mind into history?

The rest of it was a little easier, karma delayed but not denied probably related to Dumbledore getting what's coming for him, and the school being important to that plan was an obvious thing to him  _ long _ before he heard Bane’s words. His eyes burning had to refer to his creature inheritance, though he wasn't entirely sure that was part of the actual prediction.

Saturn being bright though… he frowned. Harry wasn't much for astrology, but the last time a centaur made a note about a planet being bright, it had been a premonition about the coming war, so this was likely just as important.

He had taken an astrology book from the library on his way back to the dorm for the purpose of looking into just what Saturn typically represented. Opening said book and flipping through for a while, he came upon just what he needed.

**Saturn- Oftentimes the planet Saturn is used in relation to law and responsibility, ambition and structure. It moves slowly, and for that is correlated with elders, fathers, and teaching; this has lended it to being the planet of school, and trials, and of the collective law/ reality of the universe. Because of its slow rotation, many have related it to karma, as it will always eventually come to pass. Saturn is known as steady and unyielding, but testing and bold.**

_ What a load of poppycock.  _

Harry wasn't one for astrology and divination to begin with, feeling sour to the practice after Trelawny and her prophecy ruined his first life. He could admit that Theo’s ‘hunches’ were far more useful than vague prophecies, but they have also been proven to have severe drawbacks. He thought back to Draco’s magical outburst with a wince. Yea, he wasn't one for divination, but he could admit that once he was given a prophecy he would most certainly take it to heart. 

Leaning back in his chair Harry stretched, sighing loudly. He wasn't going to get anywhere with this right now, he might as well just leave it be. Getting up, Harry started getting ready for bed.

* * *

Tom sat in his mindscape, stressing. Harry had just gone to sleep, and he was currently having a minor freak out over the contents of Bane’s warning. The bastard just  _ had  _ to clue Harry in to his plans, Tom was lucky the boy had misinterpreted the centaur’s words, or everything would go to shit. 

He sighed, the hex bags seemed to be doing their job. The cursed necklace he put onto the Granger chit wasn't going to last forever, as Dumbledore would eventually find it and force it off her, but the hex bags were much more permanent. 

Tom leaned back in his high back chair, he was in his study at the moment, pouring over plans for the next five years. The hex bags had been an important part of the plan, as they kept Dumbledore off of Harry's ass as long as they were both in the castle. The nature of the bags were quite simple, as long as the two intended people were inside of the circle, one of the people would feel compelled to ignore the other. No… ignore was the wrong word, give a wide berth? The point of them was to be assured that Dumbledore wouldn't focus on Harry while they were both in the castle, the fatal flaw being summers, when Harry was most certainly  _ not _ in the castle. 

He wasn't completely assured that it was effective for the first week of school, as he had observed Dumbledore studying Harry almost constantly during that time, but after the first week that tapered off quickly, so it appeared that there was a bit of a lag. It made sense, as the bags were tied to one's magical signature, so both people would have to get their magic all over the place for it to start to work.

“I think I've got a soft spot for tall grumpy men.”

He glared at Fate, the infernal woman was here to torment him again, he was sure of it.

“See! Athimus is just like that, all edgy and tall with that dark hair. Though he has a much bigger di-”

“Do you need something?”

She shrugged, kicking her feet as she sat on his desk, she seemed to sit on everything  _ except _ for a chair, it was incredibly bothersome.

“If you have nothing to say, I ask that you take your leave from my mind.”

She sighed, loud and drawn out, “-see, that's the difference right there, Ath always wants to talk to me.”

“Get out.”

Rolling her eyes, Fate got off the desk, “I guess that's why I love him. All the other gods and goddesses think I'm psychotic, but he just thinks I'm fun.”

“Lament about your functionable relationship somewhere else.”

She groaned, “oh GOD you're such a BORE when you're not plotting.” She pouted in a way that was very unbecoming of a goddess of her station. He told her such.

“Oh please Tommy dear, I'm allowed to pout, loss of decorum is something that mortals have to deal with, not me.” she smiled, “-or you, Mr. Dead-man-walking.”

“I’m hardly walking.”

She laughed at that, it sounded like tinkling bells and detonating bombs, a strange but fitting mix of lovely and gruesome.

“For someone so close to death, you sure aren't making the most of life while you have it.” her smile was smug, lips pursed in a testing smirk.

“I have years left in my life, Fate.”

“Years move by fast.”

He glowered, growing more angry by the minute. “I have years that I will be using to assure us victory, I will not waste a moment on empty pleasures.” he ground out, teeth grating against each other.

“Oh please Riddle, it will be ever so boring to watch your eventual death if you don't enjoy yourself and those you love while you still have the time.”

“I am incapable of love, my mother assured me that.”

She examined her nails, which were bitten to the skin, they grew and sharpened to points in an instant, “Romantic love is lost to you, I agree, but familial love is a different thing entirely.”

“I killed any remaining family I had years ago, your argument has fatal flaws.”

She looked at him pityingly, “a family that does not raise you is no family at all, Tom.”

He remembered very similar words from a certain centaur the year prior.

**A father who did not raise you is no father at all.**

“He is not my son.”

“He’s as good as, and he’ll miss you terribly once you're gone.”

He was left to his lonesome, pile of regrets growing ever higher, son asleep in bed and a meddling goddess nowhere to be found.

Tom collapsed back into his chair.

* * *

Blaise read by faint wand light, the small book resting in his palm as his eyes darted across the pages, absorbing as much knowledge as he could before exhaustion became too much to ignore.

**A pledge must be taken to be considered one of Loki’s own, till that happens, you will be nothing but a faceless worshiper, begging for the praise of greater creatures.**

He knew from the book that pledges were traditionally on the thirteenth birthday, but he wanted to do it earlier. He had also written to his great great grandfather in Italy to get more information. The man had explained that in current times people pledged themselves on their seventeenth birthday, considering thirteen to be much too young. Blaise though that was boring though, why go along with the trend if he could muck everything up instead? It was traditionally done on the thirteenth anyway, so they couldn't really fault him for sticking to tradition.

**The first part of the pledge is to give your body to Loki, promising to use it advantageously in your pursuits. The second pledge is to give your mind, allowing Loki in to assure your loyalty. The last pledge is of one's soul and magic. These are in the same pledge as they are often intertwined and indistinguishable. Giving your entirety to a god is a pledge of the most sincere and intimate of rituals. It is not for the faint of heart.**

Blaise wouldn't consider himself particularly faint of heart, he had just rode a basilisk that day after all. Flipping the page, he came upon an intricately drawn circular symbol, it appeared to be the grounding circle for the ritual. He frowned, it was awfully complex, it would take a lot of time to practice. Sighing, he stuck a piece of thin parchment into the page as a bookmark and kept going, intent on finishing the chapter and getting a vague understanding of the pledges.

* * *

**Heir Hadrian James Potter-**

**I would like to first beg apologies for my very belated reply to your most appreciated letter. I am afraid to say that the stone in which you inadvertently helped recover was just recently returned to me by your less than enjoyable ministry, but I digress.**

**I mean not to insult you Heir Potter, but it came to my attention upon your letter that you are indeed the last in line for the Potter heirship. This would not have first been something that needed to be noted upon, but in my research into immortality many hundreds of years ago I happened upon the story of the three brothers. The story was quite fascinating, and I had spent the many decades after creating my stone researching the Peverell family, and came upon their only known descendants: the Potters.**

**I mean not to alarm you if this is something you were not aware of, but I felt it prudent to share with you that the Deathly Hallows, wherever they may be, are your birthright by blood.**

**I wait for your reply with patience equal to your own, thank you again for your truthfulness and promptness in notifying me of your involvement in the recovery of my stone.**

**With appreciation,**

**Nicolas Flamel**

**Sir Nicolas Flamel-**

**Thank you for your reply, I understand that the time it takes to reply to school children’s letters does not often come, and I thank you for replying at all.**

**I appreciate your bluntness in this matter, but rest assured, I am aware of my heritage and have been taking measures to actively hunt it down, though as I am twelve years old and orphaned, it is admittedly quite slow going.**

**If you ever find the time in which you would wish to write again, I ask most politely if you would be interested in meeting me at any point of time in which you find yourself particularly inclined. I have researched your stone with interest, and have yet to find anything of particular substance. Not to be cheeky in any regard, but I find it quite unfair that you know so much about my great mysteries and yet yours are still shrouded in darkness.**

**Forever intrigued,**

**Heir Hadrian James Potter**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to call this my 'loose ends' chapter, where I continue on with plot points that were more anecdotes to the greater plot, but are still quite important. There's also Blaise riding Jörmungandr, because I said so.


	28. The Fickle Morality of Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is dragged to a dueling club, which goes marginally better than he had expected, though Blaise could use an alteration in morals.

November blurred together in a rush of classes, relaxation in the common room, studying in the secret library, and various other side projects. Soon December reared its ugly head, and with it was the dreaded Defense Club. Harry had been hoping with  Jörmungandr not petrifying anyone, Lockhart wouldn't feel as inclined to found the thrice damned dueling club, but it seemed that some things were universal constants.

“I'm not going.” he was firm in his decisions, and not even Draco could sway him.

“What's he on about?”

They were in the library, Theo neck deep in elemental magic, Harry having pointed it out to him on a previous trip.

_ “What's this about mate?” Theo was getting dragged through the stacks by Harry, who was excited to show his friend the potentials of elemental magic. _

_ “So you know how magic is based on intent as well as your core?” _

_ Theo looked at him quizzically, “of course.” _

_ “What if I told you I found magic based purely on personality?” they turned a corner, and Harry pointed down to the single shelf labeled ‘elemental magic’ _

_ “No such thing exists.” He was curious though, staring with interest at the shelf. _

_ Harry tisked, bending down and snatching the book he had first read off the shelf and handing it over. _

_ “Everything that you say doesn't exist is proven to exist here, read this one.” he then turned away, listening with an amused smile as Theo cast a translator spell. _

Not ten minutes after that had Theo run back to their table with the entirety of the elemental magic shelf in his arms or levitated behind him. Every day since then the boy had dragged Harry into the third floor girls loo to open the chamber, with the promise to be back to open it again for lunch. 

“Draco’s trying to convince me to go to that horrid dueling club tomorrow and I refuse to humiliate myself in such a way.”

Draco rolled his eyes, exasperated, “you know next to nothing about the blasted thing, what's the harm in checking it out?”

Of course he couldn't tell them that he knew more than he ever wanted to of that dueling club, and that there was in fact quite a bit of harm in checking it out.

“Lockhart has his lilac sent all over the bloody thing, I'm not going.”

Blaise was laughing at him, and Draco growing red in frustration; Theo ignored them all, still buried in old tomes and parchments filled with notes, a translation spell whispered ever so often.

“Now youre just being paranoid mate, I know the guys a bastard but he wouldnt be that stupid.”

_ He is that stupid and no I’m not paranoid. _

“I'm not going and that's final.” He crossed his arms firmly across his chest, giving Draco a warning glare. Sadly, Draco was just as stubborn as him, and would not yield so easily.

“You will lose literally nothing from this.” Draco hissed through his teeth.

“Except my dignity.”

The blonde threw his hands up in exasperation, head raised to the heavens as if the gods will shine down and compel Harry into action.

Almost as if the gods had answered, a sudden saving grace in the form of a chaotic Blaise disrupted the entire argument, “well if you did come and it is somehow being run by Lockhart, you'll get to watch as he makes a fool of himself in front of most of the school.” He pointed out, eyes glinting mischievously.

The two shared a look, determined now that it was two on one to sway him.

“I'm not going.”

* * *

He was going.

Harry wasn't happy about it, mind you, but he figured that he would rather grit his teeth and bear it than be forced to deal with Blaise pranking him within an inch of his life for the rest of term. 

Walking into the new dueling club, Harry looked around in distaste, being partially dragged by Draco into the room. Blaise was leading the charge, Theo picking up the rear with his nose shoved in a book from the Hogwarts library, appearing as enthusiastic as Harry felt.

Finding a place among the other Slytherins, Harry nodded to Vaisey tiredly.

“Gather round! Gather round! Can everybody see me? Can you all hear me?”

_ Fuck you. _

“Oh merlin, Harry was right.” Blaise whispered with horror from Draco's other side, who had his face buried in his hands.

“Let's all agree to take my advice going forward.”

“Excellent!” Lockhart was still there, unfortunately.

“On the prompting of the headmaster, I have found it prudent to start this little dueling club.”

Harry tuned out the rest of the speech, only registering that this was apparently Dumbledore's bright idea. Was this a test? His eyes narrowed.

“Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape.”

The other boys looked much more interested in the proceedings, as was Harry. It wasn't often that you got to watch a peacock fly.

They indeed, got to watch a peacock fly, as the man went soaring across the room and onto his back with a thud. The Slytherins (and most of the other houses, let's be honest) cheered, extremely happy with the current proceedings.

“An excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind me saying, it was pretty obvious what you were about to do.” Lockhart strode back across the platform, pretending he didn't hit his hip rather hard on the ground. “If I had wanted to stop you, I most certainly would have done so.”

Harry let himself get paired up with an irate Ronald Weasley who, once the chaos started, attempted to simply lunge at him, fist posed ready to strike. Harry simply sidestepped all the attacks with a bored look, already wishing he had stayed in bed. Once Lockhart finally called an end to the madness, Blaise had Seamus Finnigan jinxed twelve different colors, Theo had given poor Dean Thomas a concussion by hitting him over the head with his book, and he could distantly still hear Draco and Earnest Macmillan arguing about something or another, fingers pointing in accusation instead of wands.

“Alright alright enough of that, let's have a demonstrating pair instead eh?” he turned to Snape, as if to question if it was alright. Snape nodded mutely.

“Hm, yes yes.. Ah, Potter! How about it?” motioning to Harry, the boy simply raised an eyebrow, not moving an inch.

“Come on up lad.”

“With all due respect professor, I would sooner dance starkers into the forbidden forest.” Laughter erupted around him, the professor went pink.

“Right, yes well, how about you, Weasley?” the ginger stormed past Harry, intent on being the star of the show.

“-aaaand… hm, how about you, Mr. Malfoy.”

_ Oh merlin help us. _

Draco sauntered up to the platform, all the more ready to utterly destroy Weasley in a controlled environment. Much like the last time, Snape pulled him aside and whispered something in his ear, no doubt how to cast serpensortia. Harry grimaced, his friends were held by secrecy vows, but everyone else in this room most certainly was not.

Weasley was also getting instruction, except from Lockhart, and looked exceptionally confused with the man.

“Alright you two, line up now in proper dueling form.” They complied, Draco’s stance was much cleaner and posture much straighter, Harry observed.

“Now bow…” they did so.

“3...2...1...Begin!”

Almost immediately Draco cried out “serpensortia!” and a long viper was conjured out of his wand. Weasley gave a great screech and stumbled back.

“Oh dear, not to worry chaps, I'll fix it!” Lockhart made it much much worse, shooting the snake up into the air and back down, the poor thing flopping onto the floor with a  _ slap. _

_ “~Bad two legs! Must attack. Go away!~”  _ The snake was very frightened and reared up, lunging at the closest person. That person just happened to be one Justin Finch-Fletchley. Harry watched, detached, as the snake came down on the boy and bit into his raised arm, Finch-Fletchley crying out in pain. It was pandemonium for several minutes, with Snape vanishing the snake and removing the now convulsing boy from the room, Lockhart desperately trying to get things under control. 

Eventually, the headmaster was summoned, and Harry slunk into the shadows, making sure to not be seen by the man. Snape and Dumbledore stood conversing for several moments, before the headmaster reprimanded Lockhart for agitating the deadly snake, and pulled him from the room.

“Everyone is free to go, leave now.” Snape's parting words were spoken to the students, and with a flourish of his robes, he was gone.

Harry was grabbed around the arm and dragged from the room by Blaise, Theo and Draco not far behind. He was pulled along down into the dungeons and through the common room entrance, pulled along into the second year dorms. Harry was forced down to the floor, and his friends settled down in a circle in the middle of the room, apparently here for a group meeting.

Blaise started, still with a hand firmly around Harry's arm, “He might die.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, the others nodded at Blaise’s assessment.

“Do you mind explaining how exactly that is my fault?”

Blaise looked at him quizzically, “Harry, you're a parselmouth, you could have stopped the snake.”

_ Ah, the fickle morality of children. _

_ Fuck off Tom. _

“So what you're saying is that I should have revealed, to everyone in that room, that I am a parselmouth. That's what you're saying.” Blaise threw his hands in the air, finally releasing him.

“It's the morality of things mate! You didn't even seem to be considering it.”

“No, I wasn't.” his gaze hardened, eyes moving from one boy to the next, “because we have one of the most skilled mediwitches on staff and he will most likely be just  _ fine.” _

“Most likely-”

“Would you have preferred the alternative?” Blaise’s mouth snapped shut, and he opted to just glare angrily, Harry met his enthusiasm. For several minutes there was a tense silence, Draco and Theo sharing looks of worry and Blaise and Harry glaring at each other heartedly.

“Harry’s right.” Draco came to his best friend's aid, “it would have been a disaster if he started speaking in parseltongue, the muggleborn will be fine, Blaise.”

Theo nodded cautiously, not wanting to anger the Italian further. 

It didn't work,  _ “figlio di puttana,  _ piss off!” and with that Blaise stormed out of the room, leaving an insulted looking Draco and exasperated Theo in his wake. Harry was irritated with the boy, and Tom was attempting to placate him.

_ He is still young, and if what you believe is true, Loki will corrupt his morals soon enough. _

_ I hope you're right, if every time I make a tough decision like this he gets all pissy it's going to make things exceptionally difficult. _

“Harry, he’ll come around. I wont say I support letting the guy get hurt, but the other option was way worse.” Theo spoke up, consoling him. Harry rolled his eyes, he didn't need to be placated.

“Don't worry about me Nott, go deal with that idiot.” sighing, Theo got up and went to hunt down Blaise, leaving Draco and Harry alone in the room. They sat there for a while, leaning on Draco's bed frame side by side. Harry’s thoughts moved from the argument to how angry he had gotten at Theo after Draco's magical outburst, he still felt like that reaction was over blown. He cared about Blaise and Theo, and he would be worried if either of them got hurt, but he wouldn't immediately consider murder at the drop of a hat like he had when he first saw Lord Malfoy.

_ Could he be my soul mate? _

He side eyed the blond, studying his soft hair and porcelain skin-  _ hold on a bloody moment. _ Harry got his mind back on track, he had never considered the possibility of being gay, though in his last life the only girl that he had actually felt affection for was Ginny, and that was because he had been dosed up on love potions. Cho had been more of a passing attraction, and he only really liked her because she was a good seeker. Draco though… he glanced at the boy again. He had often found himself studying the boy in his last life, and while there had been an underlying hatred attributed to the compulsions, the studying had been more due to the boy's elegant features.

“Draco.”

“Hm?” the shorter boy looked up at him, questioning.

“If I ever do something you think is wrong, please let me explain myself before you get angry.” Harry didn't know for sure about Draco being his soul mate, but he knew that no matter what, he didn't want to lose him.

“Of course. You'll always have me in your corner, Harry.”

* * *

Blaise stormed through the halls, dodging students and weaving through crowds. He knew that logically Harry was right, the aftermath would have been a disaster, but Finch-Fletchley could very well be dying at the moment, and some things just aren't worth the cost it takes. 

Blaise could faintly hear someone calling out for him, probably Theo doing damage control. Thinking quickly, he ducked behind a tapestry and into a hidden corridor, weaving through the dusty passage with practiced ease.

Turning swiftly down an adjacent passage, he slammed right into someone, them both stumbling backwards. Looking up, he found the faint outline of two people in the dark. Blaise quickly grappled for his wand, pulling it out and casting a lumos.

“Weasley terrors.”

“Zabini menace.”

The three of them all nodded at each other companionably, before moving separate ways. 

He took several more turns, and had to climb a rickety ladder before coming upon a trap door in the ceiling. Un-latching it, he peaked out, finding that he was in a deserted corridor on one of the upper floors. Climbing all the way up, he looked around the area, very lost. Attempting to find a landmark, Blaise spotted a strange tapestry of trolls in.. tutus? Shaking his head, he walked past it, before stopping. Around the corner, he heard the distinct sound of two people snogging. Turning on his heel, he went back the way he came before pausing again. Maybe they would be able to give him directions? Turning back around, he almost rounded the corner, before marching backwards again. They were getting  _ really  _ into it over there. He moved forward marginally, wishing there was somewhere he could stop in to just  _ think for a bloody minute.  _ Shuffling backwards, he suddenly caught movement in his peripherals, which caused him to turn his head. Watching with awe, an ornate door faded into existence across from him. Not giving himself a moment to think rationally, Blaise leapt forward and opened the door wide, clambering into a cozy room with a roaring fireplace, leaving a moaning couple behind in the hall.

* * *

Fred and George Weasley were not idiots.

Oh sure, they did rather horribly in school, and teachers (and their mother) were constantly reprimanding them for not paying attention in school. All that didn’t makethem were stupid however; far from it, they were rather brilliant really. It was certainly a pity that their brilliance was focused entirely on making pranks, but such was the curse of ingenuity.

The twins snuck through a hidden passage, sticking to the walls of the already small passageway. Fred was taking the charge, while George directed him with the map from behind. Hearing quiet footsteps just a second too late, Fred braced himself as someone barreled into him. Stumbling backwards, a lumos was suddenly lit, revealing the face of Slytherins resident prankster, Blaise Zabini.

“Weasley terrors.” he greeted.

“Zabini menace.” they replied in tandem.

Sharing a nod with the boy, they passed him and went on their way, intent on making it through to their destination before dinner became an issue. Fred veered off to the right, moving down some narrow steps and into a wider passage, his twin following close behind.

“Over there, you think?” he turned slightly, waiting as George carefully read over the marauders map.

“Should be.” was the reply.

Stepping forward, Fred approached a divot in the wall, tapping the brick with his finger, testing the ambient magic for any sort of protective spells. Sensing some sort of ward, he took out his wand and started casting detection spells, coming upon an invisibility ward. Carefully peeling it back, he revealed an old door in the wall, covered in dust and looking as though it hasn't been touched in centuries.

“Wicked.'' George came up and reached a hand out to the door, knocking his fist on the wood.

“Sounds pretty thin.” It seemed if the unlocking charm didn't work, they could just bust down the door with a careful bombarda.

_ “Alohomora.''  _ Fred cast in a whisper, not wanting to alert any passing tricksters of their exploits. They both sighed in relief as the lock audibly clicked, and George reached forward and grasped the old rusting handle, turning it gently. Pushing the door inward, they both peaked in, finding a room absolutely caked in dust.

“Looks like an old office,” remarked Fred, walking further in. If it was an office, it was  _ very  _ old and had been abandoned for centuries  _ at least. _ Going over to the desk, Fred started snooping around as George lit the old candelabras. There were knickknacks and deteriorating parchment littering the desk, little bobbles of unknown origin strewn about. George was examining a display case that seemed to be showing off an impressive amount of skulls, most of them animal, a few looking more human. Fred couldn't gleam anything off of the parchments, being too old to be of much use. Frustrated, he pulled open one of the drawers, finding with glee a book of undetermined origin.

“Oi, Georgie, check this thing out.” lifting the book out of the drawer carefully, he peered at the title on the front page, George shining the lumos over his shoulder so they could both read it.

**The Secrets of Hogwarts Past: How I Uncovered the Magics of Old**

They shared a look, Fred already opening the book to the first page.

“Shall we?”

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha not me back at it with my bullshit again. I've been meaning to introduce the twins in some capacity but could never find a good enough reason... till today.  
> figlio di puttana- direct translation: son of whore, common usage: motherfucker  
> I'm not Italian, have never been to Italy, and really hope that one website I used to get a proper Italian cuss was accurate.  
> Edit: an Italian has confirmed that it is, in fact, a proper italian cuss. Take that google translate.


	29. He Gifts Children an Army

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco has his first quidditch game of the season, and catches the snitch with a complicated maneuver. Harry almost has a heart attack.  
> Daphne Greengrass opens a wall, revealing more about herself to Harry than she wanted.

Blaise didn't come down for dinner that day, and returned to the dorm later at night, right when Harry was about to give up and go to bed.

“Did you get lost or something?”

Blaise rolled his eyes, “whatever mate. Look, I get that logically it's better for you to keep the parseltongue thing a secret, but I don't like the idea of people getting hurt for no good reason. You know?”

Harry nodded, wondering if he would feel the same way after pledging himself to a god. Harry had discussed Jörmungandr’s nickname for the boy with the snake in an effort to understand his reasoning. Jörmungandr revealed that Blaise smelt like a worshiper of gods, and he could distantly feel Loki on him.

_“~You are aware that Loki is supposedly your father.~”_

_“~Perhaps that is why I am so amused by the boy.~”_

The conversation had tapered off at that, Harry and Tom theorizing about the new knowledge. From what Harry could tell, it was likely that the weird little book that Blaise was always reading through was some sort of ‘how to devote yourself to a Norse god of your choice’ book, which was just absurd, but whatever.

Harry watched the Italian boy get ready for bed, eyes narrowed. He didn't want to breach any sort of boundary by randomly bringing up the book or the other boy’s obvious worshiping, but he also didn't want Blaise to fuck around and accidently get himself killed.

“Night mate.” Blaise crawled into bed, quickly blowing out his light, Harry did the same, still thinking furiously.

* * *

Time passes on. As December continued, the biting chill of winter reached out to envelop Harry in a freezing hug. He spent many hours out reading by the frozen lake, watching a few older years skate across it with a small smile. Winter was his favorite time of year, and he wished some times that he could live someplace where it never got warm out. Draco was in agreement, Veela living predominantly in colder climates and the higher elevations of mountain ranges. They both often took quiet walks along the border of the forbidden forest, talking about inconsequential things.

“Why is it so _bloody_ cold!” Blaise did not agree with their temperature preferences, being native to the temperate climate of Italy.

“Grin and bear it, mate.” Theo was in a similar predicament, bundled up so much that you could barely pick out his pink nose in all the wool.

“Sissies, the lot of you.” Harry was in a thick wool jumper and scarf, no jacket in sight.

“You can't be bloody human mate, how the hell have you not frozen your bits off?” Blaise’s teeth were chattering as he spoke, and he had his uncovered hands shoved under his armpits in an effort to warm them.

“I'm not a sissy like you.”

“Sod off.”

They were walking up to the quidditch pitch, intent on watching Draco's first quidditch match of the season. It was snowy out for the night's storm, but the sky was clear, it was a perfect (albit cold) day for a quidditch match. 

Blaise and Theo sighed in momentary relief as the trio made their way up the stairs, several warming charms keeping the interior of the stands relatively warm. They groaned comically once they reached the top and cold air was biting at their cheeks once more, Harry took a deep breath with a small smile. Settling into a group with the other Slytherin second years, Blaise grumpily cast a bunch of warming charms on himself, Theo not far behind. Harry entertained the idea of rolling up his sleeves.

It was several more minutes of freezing cold till the players finally flew out onto the pitch. Slytherin cheered uproariously as the team flew in a large circle. Harry got a good look at Draco's face, which was pink from the cold and happy as could be. 

The Ravenclaw team streamed out after them, and the proper house cheered as well. Hufflepuff and Gryffindor stands were more empty than usual, most people not wanting to go out into the cold for a game that didn't even have their team in it. Madam Hooch released the snitch suddenly, Harry watched with sharp eyes as the gold glint sped around till it zipped out of sight. The quaffles were thrown, and the game was on. 

Harry didn't pay much attention to the game, focusing on watching Draco, making sure that he was safe and not going out of his way to injure his back. It was a bloodbath, he found once he listened in on Lee Jordan’s commenting, Slytherin leading 140-30. Harry was high strung, watching for any stray bludgers heading Draco’s way.

_He shouldn’t be playing with his back this tender._

“Has Malfoy spotted the snitch?” Jordan’s voice broke through the deafening cheering. Draco had indeed spotted the snitch, and was streaming across the pitch towards it, the Ravenclaw seeker far behind him. Harry stood a little in his seat, watching uneasily as Draco did a complicated maneuver and almost crashed into the turf in his effort to catch the snitch. Standing fully now, Harry watched, holding his breath, as Draco tumbled in the air for a moment before righting himself, holding his arm up triumphantly.

Harry was halfway down the stairs before the other players had landed, wanting to make sure they didn't crowd him. He didn't have to worry though, as Flint had built a team of stern older years, and none of them were being overly affectionate. Draco still looked ecstatic, and was smiling broadly; considering that this was his first real match and he caught the snitch, Harry figured that he had a right to be.

* * *

It was in the middle of charms that Harry finally went up to Greengrass to ask her to follow him after dinner. She nodded determinedly before returning to her notes, Harry caught Draco’s judging eyes, and rolled his.

“She's useful.”

“She's a bitch.”

“It's not like I'm going to date her Draco, she's just helping me with something.”

“What? Snogging practice?” Blaise had chosen the worst time possible to be a nuisance.

“Eat shit, Zabini.”

Theo rolled his eyes from next to Blaise, tired of the bickering.

“Alright everyone, that's all today. Make sure to read up on the Shrinking charm and their various uses. I want a four foot essay on it by next Tuesday.” Flitwick shooed them all out of the room, and the Quartet headed to dinner, Draco still moping and Blaise firing off innuendos left and right. Harry was extremely close to knocking his teeth out before he was interrupted by two very familiar voices.

“Well hello there, Zabini menace.”

Blaise got a competitive look in his eyes, turning to face the Weasley twins, who had snuck up on the group, “Weasley terrors, what a pleasure.”

Harry leaned over to Draco, “are they posturing or something?” The shorter boy had to muffle his snort with a cough.

One of the twins grinned evilly, “we hate to steal you away from your little... possy, but we need your assistance with a little something.”

The other twin spoke up, “-and it's really quite delightful, I'm sure missing dinner is well worth it.”

Harry didn't even get a chance to open his mouth and argue, as the horrible trio were already off.

“... did you know they were friends?” Theo sounded just as confused as Harry felt.

“Not a clue.”

* * *

Blaise and the twins snuck through the halls, taking shortcuts through secret passages and dodging teachers, not wanting to be caught by any out of the great hall. As the twins led him into a very familiar passage, Blaise questioned if this was about whatever they had been up to the last time they had crossed paths.

_Probably._

Peering at the twins, Blaise entertained the idea of showing them the little green book, but wasn't positive that Loki wanted them. Brushing that aside for further thought, he let himself get lured down farther into the bowels of the school, nearly tripping down short narrow steps into a lower level of the dungeons. The passage widened suddenly, and they came upon a _very_ old looking door in the stone.

 _“Since when was that there?”_ he whispered under his breath, staring confusedly at it.

“We just found it a few weeks ago, you've got to see this place.” one of the twins, who Blaise thought was likely George, spoke up.

Peering in the now open door, he wasn't all that impressed, “it's an old office.”

The twins pushed past him and started poking around, one lighting some candles and the other grabbing a book off of the desk. 

“Here you are, take a good look at this!”

Blaise rolled his eyes and glanced at the cover.

**The Secrets of Hogwarts Past: How I Uncovered the Magics of Old**

“Holy shit.” he whispered, opening up the cover and skimming the contents.

 _“Holy shit.”_ It was about the library of secrets. Some crazy bastard had hunted down the chamber and mosied into the library… and then wrote a book about it?

“Isn't it incredible? An entire library filled with ancient magics _sitting right under our feet!”_ Blaise could tell that the twins were really excited about this new find. Hell, he was excited about it too, this was _huge._ He was super excited to read the book and figure out what had happened to this guy to just come upon the chamber, how did Jörmungandr react to him? Did Jörmungandr _remember_ this guy?

The twin that was lighting the candles spoke suddenly, “we've been reading the book but it apparently doesn't give anything away about the chamber, saying that the entrance was in the third floor transfiguration room, but there isn't a transfiguration classroom on the third floor, so it might be a misdirect.” 

“-it could also be that the book was made bloody ages ago and who knows what's changed in the castles layout since then.”

The twins had obviously argued over this for weeks, considering the heated glares they were sending at each other.

“Yeahhh…” how was he supposed to go about this? He was physically incapable of talking about the library to anyone but his friends, the vow made sure of that, but these two weren't going to stop till they figured out the mystery.

“-anyway, we wanted help with figuring out how to learn parseltongue-”

“-since apparently you need to know it to get into the chamber.” 

They spoke overlapping each other, on the same mental wavelength.

He raised an eyebrow, “so because I'm a Slytherin I know how to speak parseltongue?”

The twin that had handed the book to him rolled his eyes, “of course not, but you probably know someone who does yea?”

_Fuck._

He could feel the vow block up his throat, making it impossible to speak. He opted to just shake his head no.

The other twin rolled his eyes this time, apparently the two were quite exasperated with him today, “alright fine, don't tell us then, but we’ll figure it out at some point you know.”

“Sure sure, you couldn't figure a flobberworm from your mother.” he sassed back.

“Well yea, they're almost identical!” This was followed by uproarious laughter, and Blaise was quickly dragged into studying the book and planning out potential entrances.

* * *

Harry strode through the halls confidently, Greengrass trailing behind him. They were headed for the fourth floor, passing the portrait of the fat lady, who scoffed at them quite rudely. Greengrass made a very unladylike hand gesture in return. He could hear the painting gasp as they rounded a corner.

“Alright, here we are.” he motioned to the wall across from them, which was thankfully void of any curious portraits that my spy on them.

“A wall?” she raised an eyebrow.

He sighed, exasperated, “it's a secret for a reason Greengrass, the entrance isn't just going to be there out in the open.”

“Fine, what do I have to do to get this over with?”

_Alright what do I have her do now?_

_She needs to put her hand on the third brick from the bottom and say ‘I need an army’._

He relayed Tom’s instruction to her, and she dutifully complied.

Standing back, they both watched as the individual bricks all moved out of the way, revealing a dusty corridor into darkness.

“Alright well… I'll get Parkinson out of the way for you. Cheers.” he moved to the opening intent on getting in and out fast.

“Hold on a minute, can I come with?”

_Uhhh…_

“Why would you want to?”

She huffed, crossing her arms and stomped her foot, “well I went to all this trouble to get it open for you, the least you could do is let me take a peak.”

_What should I do?_

_Try to logic your way out of the situation?_

_Very helpful, thank you Tom._

_Anytime._

“Couldn't you come back some other time if you're really that curious.”

“Of course not, you're obviously taking something from in there.”

_Ahhh, she's trying to figure me out… pity._

“Well as much as I would appreciate the company, I'm afraid I'll have to decline.” he made a move to the passageway, taking out his wand to light a lumos.

“I'll close the passage behind you and you won't be able to get out.”

“I could actually, the interior opening mechanism is different from the exterior.”

She shoved past him, elbowing his stomach and marching forward.

“Oi!” Harry raced after her, Tom’s laughter rattling in his skull.

* * *

Blaise rubbed his eyes tiredly, after leaving the Weasley twins he had headed to the kitchens to get a quick dinner. After getting back to the dorm though, he wished he had just stayed with the two fourth years. Draco was on a long winded rant about Greengrass, and Theo (being a supportive friend) had sat patiently and listened as he ranted on and on… and on… 

_I can't take much more of this._

“-not only that, but she is blatantly flirting with him and it is just _disgusting_ to watch her try and get his attention. It's just honestly despicable, I can't believe he even bothers to associate with that _cow._ I mean honestly-”

“Draco, I get that you have a huge bloody crush on the guy, but can you give it a break?”

Theo’s eyes bulged and he started coughing aggressively. Draco went a deep red, the blush traveling up his neck and making his entire face red.

“I-I but I.. No I don't-”

“Oh come on, of course you do.”

“But-but.. But that's ridiculous.” He ran his hands shakily through his hair, messing it up and making himself appear bedraggled, blush still quite prominent.

“Right, sure, because you're totally not blushing right now.'' Blaise was having all too much fun with this, Theo was watching the show with wide eyes. Instead of responding to the taunts, Draco grabbed a pillow off his bed and chucked it at the other boy, starting an all out pillow fight, feathers flying everywhere.

* * *

“This is ridiculous, I don't understand why you're so insistent on this.” Harry was trying very hard to convince Greengrass to leave well enough alone, it wasn't very effective.

“If you're going to make me go to the trouble of opening the wall for you, the least you can do is let me see what the big deal is!” She stomped ahead, intent on getting ahead of him. He simply widened his stride to catch up.

They continued to walk through the passage, him growing more agitated and her more insistent. Finally, they rounded a bend and he just admitted defeat, the room was hardly something that would interest her anyway. Falling silent, they walked the rest of the way to a large iron plated door. Harry sighed (again), and started waving his wand in various motions, slowly peeling back the wards. Greengrass held her wand light up to the door, reading the inscription carved into the ancient metalwork.

**Slytherin has a chamber, filled with secrets.**

**Deeming only those found worthy entrance,**

**to intr** **ude upon history.**

**-**

**Hufflepuff gifts a room to fulfill all needs.**

**There to save ye in times of strife,**

**A constant comfort in misfortune.**

**-**

**Ravenclaw, allows ye find of a study.**

**Deep in the twisting caverns,**

**where secrets never keep.**

**-**

**Gryffindor, however,** **dwells in war.**

**Forced into battle with unsteady hand,**

**He gifts children an army.**

_“What?”_ She whispered quietly, hands ghosting over the words. He studied them carefully, imprinting them to memory, before grasping the door handle and swinging it inwards.

The two second years gazed out into an expansive room, filled to the brink with weapons, armor, and magical devices of destruction as far as the eye could see.

_Bloody Hell._

“It- it's a war room…” Greengrass whispered, words muffled by the hand covering her mouth in shock. He nodded, also overwhelmed.

“Gryffindor created the room to be assured that if students needed to fight to protect the castle, they had every means possible to do so. It was designed so that only a woman could open it, with the logic that back then the only people that would be fighting were men, but there were female students in the castle, so they could be assured that the room would only ever be opened by students instead of an opposing force.”

She frowned, but said nothing.

Until she got curious again, “so why exactly do you need an entire arsenal of weapons?” He rolled his eyes, as if he would be so crass.

“I don't, there's a specific weapon that I need. If you insist on being here while I fetch it, feel free to help yourself to the supply.”

He proceeded to move along into the stacks, hearing her go off into a different direction.

_Ok Tom, where is it?_

_The last time I was here, it had been on a shelf along the northern wall._

_Alright, can you describe it to me again?_

_It's an ornate longbow of pale wood with silver details, I don't know how else to explain it._

_What about the quiver and arrows?_

_They all stay on theme Harry, the northern Germanics may have been tribal, but they weren't so barbaric to not color coordinate._

Rolling his eyes, Harry reached the far wall, moving along and studying the various shelves with careful eyes. He had yet to go talk to the centaurs about a potential archery practice, but the bow of Skaði was a legendary artifact that would up his chances of them saying yes considerably.

It wasn't that he needed to learn archery to defeat Dumbledore, far from it, but the bow was one created and owned by Skaði, the goddess of bowhunting, winter, and mountains; he had felt compelled to possess her bow since Tom had first mentioned it. Perhaps it was the creature inside of him, but he didn't really care, he would have the bow regardless of why he wanted it.

Spotting a pale wood, his eyes zeroed in on a long, ornate bow with silver accents, a quiver full of arrows sat next to it, similarly designed. Reaching for it eagerly, he grasped the nock, pulling the bow from its perch, the quiver soon after. Grasping the bow tightly on the grip, he let out a happy sigh, it was most certainly meant for him.

Turning back, satisfied, he made his way to the front of the room, where he proceeded to wait for Greengrass, admiring his new bow happily.

“Alright, I've got something- is that a bow?” he looked up, Greengrass had her hands wrapped around a very dangerous looking ritualistic knife.

“Do you even know how to use that?” he questioned, she appeared guilty for a moment, his eyes widened.

“You've done a ritual-” “I wont talk about this to anyone if you don't.” she blurted, a look of panic on her face. It was a stare off for several seconds, nothing moving, Harry still had his hands tightly around the grip and quiver.

“Only if you promise to open the entrance for me again if I ever need to get back in here.” he was thinking fast, the Greengrass family was gray yes, but not so dark leaning that they would let their daughter anywhere near a ritual that required blood-

“Deal.”

They left Gryffindor’s armory, heading down to the dark dungeons; both of them holding tightly to their prizes. Harry didn't question why she needed a ritual dagger, and she didn't question why he caressed the bow like it was the most precious thing in existence.

**Forced into battle with unsteady hand,**

**He gifts children an army.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed making this chapter honestly, catch me and my half assed attempts to kinda make the poem old English but then realizing it would be completely incomprehensible. :p


	30. Do You Promise?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Its Christmas time, and with it comes more delightful presents for our favorite boy-who-lived.  
> Draco is stuck at Hogwarts, and finds a delightful bit of blackmail to hold over an unsavory persons head.

Midterms came along and Harry dubbed them unimportant, instead drawing his attention to other pursuits. He had ordered a huge shipment of ink, having his friends help him carry it down into the chamber. He took careful consideration in making sure that there was enough of it, and that the charms were all still in place. The week of midterms was snowy, and Harry finished all his exams quickly so that he could go out and enjoy the weather.

He found himself packing his bags the day before the ending feast, wondering what will happen this Christmas. Aunt Petunia was sure to be cooking up a massive feast, and Dudley would probably want to box with him at some point. The last letter he had received from them revealed that Dudley had gone up a weight class, well on his way to being built like a brick shithouse. He was a good boxer too, if heavy footed. If he did want to spar with Harry, it would be a relatively even match, as Harry was an incredible dodger and quite strong, while Dudley’s punches could knock him off his feet and was always firm into the ground. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object kind of fight. 

Harry didn't check the ranking board on his way out of the common room, not particularly caring either way. Draco caught up to him, complaining loudly about how his parents were forcing him to stay at the school for Christmas.

“-apparently mother wants to go somewhere warm for the hols, and doesn't want to take me with! Can you believe that? The best part of Christmas is the cold, and she's wanting to gallivant around the Caribbean for Christmas, it's absurd!” Harry listened along, nodding at the appropriate times. His mind was elsewhere, contemplating how to convince the centaurs to teach him archery, how to get his hands on some freely given unicorn hair, the Gryffindor girls dorms that he still had no idea how to get into. There were far too many important things that he still needed to get done, and all hopefully before his thirteenth birthday.

_So much to do, so little time._

* * *

**Tlahuelpuchi- Tlaxcala**

**The Tlahuelpuchi is a Mexican vampire breed most common in the state of Tlaxcala, with deep roots among the indigenous Nahua culture of the region. The Tlahuelpuchi is a vampire born from a human family, and lives with the family for as long as they are able, sucking the blood of infants predominantly. The Tlahuelpuchi is one of the only known magical creatures to be born purely of a creature inheritance, as Tlahuelpuchis all awaken on their thirteenth birthday. Unlike other places in the world, the Tlahuelpuchi have a strong hold on their society, having a long standing pact with shamans and other creatures in the region. The vast majority of Tlahuelpuchi are female, with the females being much more powerful than the males. They must feed once a month lest they will die of starvation.**

Harry checked off the Tlahuelpuchi, and shut his book moodily. He had managed to get to the Tl- creatures sometime in the last week, and had found many fascinating things, but nothing that fit into his exact symptoms.

He looked around the train compartment. Draco was still at the school, having been forced to say by his parents. Blaise was off somewhere causing trouble, and Theo was across from him, also reading a book.

The end of term feast was uneventful, and Granger had been absent through most of it. So as he was walking down the path to the train with his friends, (Draco insisting on coming with them to see them off) Harry felt that he was piling more and more things onto the metaphorical table than he was able to take care of before his thirteenth birthday. He was already pushing some things back to third year (if he was able to get to them that is), but there were some things that really couldn't even wait over the summer, and he had no way of doing them.

Frustrated, Harry looked out the window and watched the country scenery go by, trying to calm his nerves. Regardless of how much he had to do before the year was up, he couldn't do any of it at home, so he would just have to submit himself to the knowledge that he would just have to have a normal, stress free vacation.

* * *

Waving goodbye to Theo, Harry stepped through the barrier, right into his aunt's waiting arms. 

“Oh Harry love you've grown so much already.” she squeezed him tighter, and he relaxed into her arms, pushing aside all of his worries for now.

“Come along then, I was going to make the stuffing today, I know you enjoy helping.”

The days leading up to Christmas were enjoyable. Dudley did in fact want to spar, and they had spent many hours rolling through the snow outside, wrestling more so than boxing. Marge had come over briefly to get uproariously drunk with Vernon, and they all had a great time watching the two sing Christmas carols horribly off tune.

The Christmas feast they had was also incredibly good, though the process of making it had been lengthened by Harry and Dudley’s impromptu flour fight in the kitchen while Petunia made a cherry pie. She had let them go on with it for a good ten minutes before she herself was hit with flour right to the face. They had spent two hours afterwards cleaning up the mess, giggling all the while.

That night, Harry had settled into bed, expecting to wake up the next morning to a delighted Dudley jumping onto his bed exclaiming that it was Christmas and to get his lazy arse out of bed. Drifting off to sleep, Harry began to dream.

_Harry woke in what appeared to be a forest at night, snow blanketing the ground and falling gently from the sky. Standing for a moment, enjoying the quiet, he contemplated why he was there. There had to be a reason he was standing barefoot in a foot of snow after all. He was caught off guard suddenly by a very familiar screeching coming from somewhere to his left, building in pitch as it came closer. It grated his ears and sent adrenaline coursing through his veins. That noise was truly horrific, starting out a high pitched screeching, tapering off into a growl mixed with pained whining. It sounded at times like a human, maybe, but there was something so horribly animalistic about it that ripped the idea that this thing could possibly be human right from his mind._

_Human no longer, it was a cheap imitation._

_He sprinted off to his right, the noise now behind him. Crashing through the brush, the thing gave an agitated roar before making chase._

_“You're not going to be about to out run it.” his voice was echoing around him, reverberating in his skull. The screeching sounded like a woman's voice for just a moment, it was pretending, trying to lure him in._

_“It is inevitable. Running is futile.” His voice was echoing in his skull as the animalistic growling grew ever closer. He could barely manage to keep upright, but pressed on, running on pure adrenalin._

_“You can't have me, not yet!” this time, his voice was coming from his own mouth, and the beast gave a great roar in response. A flash of gold in his peripherals made him stop. He wasted only a moment of time, before dashing towards the glowing light. The creature was licking at his heels, he could even hear its breathing; it was so close, the screeching and growling and moaning drowning out anything else._

_“So, you choose to hide? Walls can be toppled, little monster.” his voice taunted him, and he reached out desperately to a golden door. He fell through it, getting only the glimpse of long, blood coated fingers and glowing eyes before the door shut firmly behind him._

Harry practically threw himself out of bed, tripping over himself in his haste to get into the bathroom. Throwing open the door, he stumbled up to the mirror and pressed his face up close to the glass, nose brushing against the smooth surface as he stared unblinking into his eyes. It was faint, but still there, a soft glow from deep within his skull. His breath shuddered, and he sank to the floor, the darkness of night obscuring everything from sight.

_Walls can be toppled, little monster._

He took another breath, whatever protections Death had put in place were starting to deteriorate; his creature was breaking them down.

“They'll last.”

He took another shuddering breath, “how can you be certain.”

Gold and green eyes lit up in the dark, standing tall behind his crouched form, only visible to him through the glass in the mirror, his own eyes starting to dim.

“Seven months left kid. Most of those are with warmer weather.”

 _It’s stronger during the winter._ Was left unsaid.

“Do you promise?” he whispered to Death, the god nothing but a shadow of shadows in the dark room.

“I promise.”

He took another great shuddering breath, standing on shaky legs and slowly walking out of the bathroom, Death following behind him. Settling back into his bed, Harry took a moment to curl up into a ball under his covers, feeling exposed in his own mind. Athimus had placed a comforting hand on his back, rubbing it up and down his spine placatingly. 

“I have a Christmas present for you.”

Harry said nothing, simply reaching his arm out from under the covers and holding it out expectantly. A small velvety box landed in his open palm.

“No skull wrapping paper this time?” he joked, weakly.

“‘Fraid not.”

He opened the box blindly, feeling around for a little while before grasping a chain. Pulling on it, he dropped the box and felt along the chain, coming upon a diamond shaped stone attached to it.

“You made the resurrection stone a necklace?”

“No, this is something different, the resurrection stone is your Slytherin lordship ring after all.”

“Ahhh…” he didn't bother turning on the lights, simply unclasping the chain and putting it around his neck. 

He slowly fell asleep to Death brushing his hands up and down his back.

* * *

Dudley had in fact woken him up with a full body tackle. Christmas morning was a delightful affair, though Harry couldn't fully enjoy it with his nightmare still ever present in his mind. Blaise had sent him a single earring of all things, a dangling snake coiled around itself, it seemed to match the cloak pin he had gotten from the other boy the year before. His aunt insisted that he was under no condition to get his ears pierced; he was already considering the pros and cons of going against her command. Theo had gotten him a ‘beginners guide to archery’ book. Harry, no longer befuddled by the boy's seer abilities, sat it aside to read through later. Draco’s present had made him pause though, it was a leather bracelet, inlaid with a ruby carved in the shape of a rose.

_Is this really…_

He set it aside to contemplate later, having enough on his plate to even bother considering what it could mean.

His aunt and uncle had gotten him an expensive looking pair of combat boots, and Dudley had gotten him a dollar store witches hat. He thanked his guardians warmly, and tried to shove the cheap hat onto Dudley's head.

Harry eventually got the chance to take a closer look at his new necklace, up in his room with the door safely locked. It was the same shape as the resurrection stone, but was most definitely an emerald, looking closer he could see specks of gold inside the polished gem. Deciding not to question the strange rock, Harry put it out of his mind, focusing now onto the upcoming new year, and what the rest of his second year had in store for him.

* * *

Blaise wasn't having as good of a time over the holidays as Harry was, as his mother had somehow found out about his letters to his great great grandfather, and was _very_ against the idea of him pledging to a god so young.

“You will not do it _tesoro,_ I will not allow it.” Mariabella Zabini was firm in her decision, and they had an hour long argument about it till he was carted off to his room. He had been sulking there for two days, having his meals brought up by elfs, but on Christmas morning he was forced out by his mother and had to pretend to not be angry while he opened his presents. Harry had gotten him a book on cosmetic charms, with a note that if he can't be pretty on the inside, he should at least try on the outside. He just laughed it off, knowing that it was payback for sending porn for the boy's birthday. Theo had sent him a custom necklace with Loki’s mark done in emeralds, the two knotted snakes glittering beautifully. His mother had gone red with anger, but hadn't taken it from him. She was only unsupportive of him pledging so young, not his worship of a god in the first place. Draco had gifted a piece of parchment that said IOU, the ponce.

Once he had finished unwrapping all his presents, including the various unimportant ones from his extended family, his mother slid hers across the table to him.

“You may think that you are ready for a pledge, _tesoro,_ but you are not.”

He snatched the present up, replacing it with his for her, and stormed out of the room to his quarters, irate.

_What would she know, she never even pledged._

* * *

Theo was also having a less than stellar Christmas. His grandfather spent every second they were together talking about his ‘curse’ and what they can do to ‘have it stopped for good’. It was infuriating, so he spent most of his time holed up in the Nott library, studying. His grandfather eventually left him to his lonesome, and he even wrapped his friends presents in the library.

On Christmas morning, he woke up groggy, finding that he had fallen asleep in the library, face pressed into a book, using it as a pillow. He also opened his presents alone in the library, an elf bringing him all the wrapped gifts from his friends. Blaise had gotten him a bracelet that is meant to touch into his magical signature and shock him whenever he was supposed to eat or sleep. Theo rolled his eyes at the obvious play to get him to stay healthy. Draco sent him an IOU, which he set aside for future use. Harry had gifted him a journal made of rich black leather, with a note attached that said it had infinite pages, much like the one currently becoming a one-book library. This had made him excited, and he quickly wrote his full name in the book's inner cover. Setting all the other gifts aside, he grabbed a large stack of parchment that was his compiled notes from the day before and quickly set out to write them all down in his new journal, his holiday suddenly much nicer.

* * *

Draco was bored out of his mind at Hogwarts. Not only had Weasley and Granger also stayed at the school, but most of the Slytherins had left. This created an annoying situation where Weasley was constantly bothering him, but there was no one he could complain to about it. Christmas morning brought presents from his friends, which he tore into eagerly. Theo had gotten him a customized snow globe with all four of them in it, though Draco was comically smaller than the others, much to his irritation. Blaise had sent a single earring of a snake, which made Draco wonder where the other one was, either way, he thought piercing an ear would at least bring some sort of entertainment over the next week, and put it aside for later. Harry, much to his delight, had sent a new pair of top of the line quidditch gloves, and a promise to buy him the next broom that came onto the market. His parents sent more balm, and a letter detailing how they missed him terribly, even though they were having a delightful time in the Bahamas. All in all, while the break was most certainly boring, he had been gifted plenty to entertain himself with, as well as a good enough reason to prank Theo’s bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter is off schedule by an hour or so, I've been studying a lot today in preparation for finals next week. Speaking of which, I'm sorry to say that I have to adjust my updating schedule next week to once a day instead of twice. I just have too much going on and need the extra time to study. So sorry!


	31. It's Not Your Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone can feel the looming presence of summer holidays creep ever closer, bringing promises of unwanted change.

New Years was bittersweet for Harry, not only was it the start to 1993, but it also signified the year he would turn thirteen. In July of 1993, Harry Potter will officially no longer be fully human, what a thought. His family didn't know about all that though, and the adults had gotten uproariously drunk, with Petunia and Vernon dancing offbeat to a promiscuous song that made Harry cover his and Dudley’s eyes with a blush. Marge had also come over, and after plopping Riper down into Harry's lap to slobber all over him, went and also got obnoxiously drunk. 

Harry had never drank strong liquor in either lifetimes, and he hadn't ever gotten the opportunity to be shit-faced, so he was somewhat jealous of the adults. To relieve that jealousy, the two children went out in the biting cold and walked down to the park, where they met Dudley's friends and proceeded to egg a bunch of the neighborhood houses. Mostly the people that had apparently given out shitty candy for Halloween.

Harry had a grand time with the other children, and he and Dudley had arrived back home half an hour before midnight, cheeks flushed from running and adrenaline buzzing pleasantly in their ears.

The adults hadn't even noticed that they were gone, too focused on drinking #4 Privet Drive dry of alcohol, and doing a damn good job of it. Harry watched the ball drop on the telly with a wide smile on his face, Dudley's arm thrown over his shoulder and the drunkards cheering loudly enough to wake all of Surrey.

* * *

Harry stood on platform 9 ¾ in a jumper and slacks, finally having convinced his aunt to let him dress himself. He was talking quietly with Theo, who was wrapped up under at  _ least  _ three layers.

“Ten galleons says he’ll show up thirty minutes late so he doesn't have to spend time out in this cold.” Theo grumbled, grumpy and nose pink from the biting wind.

They were discussing one Blaise Zabini, who had yet to show. Theo was bitter about the fact that they were still standing in the cold when the train had already arrived, Harry was annoyed that their friend was so bloody late.

“No bet.”

Harry rolled up his sleeves a tad, feeling a little warm. After he had realized that the protections against his monster were breaking, he had also realized that his immunity to the cold had gotten more and more obvious as time went on. Worried mothers were already glancing at him, tempted to wrap him up in layers of wool. 

_ Maybe I should just throw on a jacket. _

Before he tempted the idea further, the Slytherin Prince of Pranks himself came storming over to them, vehemently ignoring a beautiful woman who was yelling sternly in Italian a few paces behind him.

Blaise didn't even stop as he walked past and muttered a quick, “lets go”. Shrugging, Harry picked up his trunk and Hades’ cage (the bird having flown ahead) and followed after. Theo instead turned back to the woman and had a quick conversation with her, as she seemingly explained some things to him in hushed Italian. Harry watched with mild envy, wishing he could talk to humans in a different language instead of just snakes.

_ You need to finish teaching me French, Tom. _

_ You're a lost cause, Leech. _

_ Rude. _

“Theo, we’re leaving.” Blaise seemed to grow more and more irritated by the second, and Harry followed behind him silently. Theo eventually caught up with them, looking troubled. The boy didn't say anything though, and instead settled down by the window in their usual compartment and pulled out a book, only glancing sharply at Blaise before getting absorbed into his tome.

“Well, what was that all about?” Theo might want to be subtle, but Harry sure didn't.

“Dont worry about it.”

A raised eyebrow, “That looked like your mother.”

“I'm sure she did.”

Harry gave up, instead pulling out his worn copy of ‘Every Magical Creature Known’ and turning to a bookmarked page.

**Unicorn-Worldwide**

**The Unicorn is an almost universal constant, with species in almost every region. The common European Unicorn is well known for being a peaceful creature with white fur and a single, long horn. The Indian Unicorn however, is known as a vicious warrior beast, which has been often ridden into battle. It is typically brown or black, with a horn more twisted and thick. Regardless of where the unicorn may be on the planet, it is widely agreed that their horns have powerful healing powers, and their blood grants a half life to those who drink it. Unicorn hair is also extremely potent, and is used in wands as wand cores. It has been theorized that unicorn hair can be used in combination with snake venom to create a powerful poison of some sort, though it has never been attempted.**

Harry sighed, the entry didn't tell him much that he didn't already know, and the fact that no one had even wondered to use freely given unicorn hair made him feel that he was on the right track. Regardless, there wasn't much he could do to experiment with the material if he didn't even  _ have  _ any of it. 

Sighing lightly, he reached into his trunk and pulled out the snake earring, intent on some pre-teenage rebellion.

“Oi, Blaise.” the other boy looked up questioningly. “Wanna pierce my ear?”

Grinning mischievously, Blaise got up from his seat and settled down on Harry's left, grabbing the earring and conjuring some ice. He had to transfigure the lever-back earring into a straight, sharp point. One muffled curse from Harry later and the earring was firmly in place, dangling from his left ear. Feeling for it, he found that the insert had been transfigured back, but was missing the lever to remove it, stuck firmly in place. He would have to transfigure it again to get the blasted thing off.

“So why are you arguing with your mum?” Blaise tugged on the earring a bit, causing Harry to curse again, before slinking back to his seat, in the mood to grouch once more.

_ Fine, be that way. _

* * *

“There you three are, the train was awfully late.” Draco had met them on the path to Hogsmeade, and had been apparently impressively bored the entire break.

Harry smiled, “how was your break? I'm afraid Blaise is in a bit of a state, might want to leave him to sulk.” The aforementioned boy glared at the boy, before stomping on ahead of the group.

“Uh… Harry?”

He turned to look at Draco, who was pointing at his ear questioningly. He was about to explain, before catching sight of a very familiar earring hanging from Draco’s right ear. He slowly raised his hand and pointed at the boy's ear, flabbergasted.

They stood for a moment, just pointing at eachother, before Theo started laughing hysterically, falling to the ground and grabbing his stomach. 

Harry cursed rather impressively, “I'm going to kill that little fucker-”

Theo was still on the ground, attempting to laugh himself into a coma.

Draco just stood there, bright red.

It took them all some time to get under control, Theo needing several minutes to just get his breathing under control, before they made their way up to the castle. Theo started chuckling whenever he glanced at them, and Draco was still a little pink, and was filling the uncomfortable silence with endless chatter.

“My break was horribly boring. Not only did those Gryffindor freaks stay around, but almost none of the slytherins did! You wouldnt believe the shite I had to go through it was ridiculous-”

To get his mind off the matching earrings, Harry started thinking about what he had to do the rest of the year. Taking to Farley was on the top of his list, as well as going down into the library and checking on the ink supply. His thousand galleons that he took from his vault last year was almost gone, and he would have to request more from Gringotts at some point. 

He still hasn't found anything that might speed up the process of converting the library, much to his displeasure. It seemed that if the next year was truly too busy for him to manage it, he would have to employ some of his friends to help, perhaps Theo? He pushed that thought aside, deciding he would contemplate it later on in the year.

* * *

It was decided by the entire Slytherin house that Blaise Zabini needed to be stopped.

His exploits with Harry and Draco's matching earrings was seemingly his first prank of the new year. Not even a fortnight since they had all returned from the holidays and he had pranked everyone at  _ least  _ twice. No one knew how he was getting into the girls dorms to prank them at night but Harry had the sneaking suspicion that Tracy was helping him. Regardless of that, he was eventually pulled aside by Flint, who had hair down to his waist that was curly and bright pink.

“You stop him, or I do.” was all he said. Harry got the message: either you make him stop this or I kill the little shit.

That was what he was doing now, having followed Blaise out of the common room and up the seventh floor under his invisibility cloak. He was planning on getting the jump on him once the halls were void of people, but when he watched the other boy open up the Room of Requirement of all things… he had a sudden change of plans.

“This is where you’ve been sneaking off to then?” he pulled the cloak off in full view of Blaise, and watched the boy process it for a moment, a foot in the Room and another still in the hall.

“Harry? You have an invisibility cloak?”

“Old family heirloom.” was his only reply, Blaise’s eyes narrowed, but he didn't get to say anything else before Harry was pushing past him into the room.

“Oi!”

The door closed behind them, and Harry got a good look at Blaise’s version of the room. It was plush, and filled to the brim with pranking supplies.

“Interesting decor.”

Blaise walked around him, “I found this room before the break. You have to walk in front of the weird tapestry three times and it appears, it changes sometimes though.” Harry looked at some sort of camouflaged banana peel with interest. 

“It's called the Room of Requirement, Helga Hufflepuff made it. It's designed to create whatever you want.”

Blaise whirled around, “Really? How the hell did you know that?” 

Harry smiled secretly, “my tutor told me.” An exasperated groan from the other boy, the tutor shtick was a well known misdirect on Harry's part. It practically meant ‘I'm not going to tell you, sorry’ at this point.

He changed the subject, “so what's your deal lately?”

Blaise glowered, “I don’t know what youre talking about.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, “so you're pranking the entirety of Slytherin house… what, just because?” Blaise ignored him, instead opting to study some sort of contraption along the western wall.

“You and your mom got into an argument over the hols, that much is obvious.” he was still getting ignored. Wracking his brain, Harry finally came up with something.

“Does it have something to do with that fancy little book you're always reading?” Now that got Blaise’s attention. Whirling around, the shorter boy practically threw himself at Harry, gripping the other boy’s collar with rage in his eyes, “shut your bloody mouth you-” Harry grabbed the boy's arms and shoved him off, stalking forward. 

“Am I, or am I not, your friend.” Blaise fell over the back of a couch in an effort to gain distance between the two of them. Harry felt something building in the back of his throat, there was something prowling around his mind angrily.

“Me, and Theo, and Draco are all worried about you. You've been an angry little bastard since we got onto the train. The others may be wanting to give you space but, I for one, am not  _ nearly that patient.” _ He jumped over the couch, Blaise stumbled up and into a shelf.

“So you have two options: be straight with me and bloody talk about it, or I'll break into your trunk and figure things out for myself.”

They stood there, Harry looming menacingly over Blaise, who was pressed up against a shelf, pretending he wasn't cowering. They stood that way silently as time stretched on, not breaking eye contact. It was a battle of wills that Blaise was losing very quickly.

With a sigh, the shorter boy admitted defeat, and Harry dragged him over to the couches for him to explain.

“I found a book about worshiping the god Loki over summer, I've been working to pledge myself to him, but my mother is extremely against it.” Harry was unsurprised by the admission.

“Well that makes sense, who knows how a ritual like that might affect you.” Blaise looked indignant, and puffed up for a rant.

“There is absolutely  _ nothing  _ wrong with pledging at thirteen. Hell, that's when people started doing it in the ninth century, my family just changed it to seventeen because the times had changed. I can handle it!” He had obviously delivered this rant before, it was probably a well worn argument between him and his mother.

“Fine then, why.”

“Wot?”

“Why do you want to do it at thirteen?”

Blasie looked at him like he was insane, “because I can?”

_ Can't argue with that, Leech. _

_ Don't you have world domination to plan? _

Harry sat back and thought. He had no idea how people were affected by pledging to gods, mostly because it almost never happened anymore. There had to be a specific reason beyond ‘the times changed’ that the Zabinis stopped pledging at thirteen, but there was no telling what that reason was.

“So when are you doing it then?”

Blaise looked confused, “well I can't, my mother wont allow it.”

“Since when did authority ever stop  _ you _ of all people.” If this was going to help Blaise not prank the house, and made his friend happy, then he’ll help the boy do it.

Blaise went from confused to excited in an instant, and they settled down to discuss the pros and cons of him pledging at Hogwarts where his mom couldn't skin him alive.

* * *

It was a few days after the fact, and the entire Slytherin house could breathe a sigh of relief as Blaise stopped the pranking. The boy seemed determined now, and had been studying his little green book with a vengeance, making notes over everything and just generally staying out of everyones hair. Alternatively, Theo seemed to be more and more tense, holling up in his dorm and not leaving on weekends, and generally isolating himself. Harry decided to take up his role as inspirational speaker of the group once more and go figure out what the deal was.

He found the boy in his dorm, seemingly hiding from the world. Theo hadn’t come to any of the meals that day, and Blaise had wondered if the boy had taken off his bracelet, whatever that meant.

“Have you eaten today.” a grunt in response.

“I'm going to drag you out of that bed if you don't talk to me.” another grunt.

“Fine then.” Harry proceeded to quite literally drag Theo out of bed by his ankle, the other boy groaning all the while, holding tight to his pillow. He flopped lazily onto the floor, still holding onto the stupid pillow.

“Get up.”

“Piss off.”

Harry's eye twitched, “either you get your ass up and talk to me or I'm going to tell Blaise that you were the one to steal his embroidered pillows.” Theo clutched his pillow tighter, face buried into the fluff.

“Fine then.” he made a motion to leave, before hearing a ‘bloody- wait you ponce” from behind him. Turning, feeling quite smug, Harry threw a pointed look at Theo’s way as the boy attempted to pull himself off the ground.

“It's none of your business-” he started, Harry wasn't falling for that shit.

“Well I'm making it my business. Spill.” Theo groaned, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“I think my inner eye is going to fully open soon.”

_ Well that's an issue. _

_ And why, pray tell, is that? _

_ An inner eye fully opening is a very painful process, usually involving the seer in question reciting prophecy of some sort, and lots of head pain. _

_ What fun. _

“How can you tell?” Harry crouched down gingerly on the shag rug next to Theo, adjusting his long legs into a sitting position.

“I keep getting migraines, and… I don't know, it's just something I can feel.” Theo rubbed his face tiredly, appearing to want to curl up in bed again, Harry felt a tad sympathetic.

“Well… after it happens, things will get better for you, yeah? Just grin and bear it.” Theo nodded, still not appearing all that enthusiastic. They sat in companionable silence for a time, before Theo changed the subject.

“Have you figured out what you are yet?”

Harry let out a frustrated groan, he most certainly had not. Theo nodded sympathetically, hugging his pillow to his chest. Both of them felt like they were on the cusp of destruction, as if any second they would be destroyed and built back up differently. Harry could feel the thrumming of a heartbeat behind his eyes, a monster prowling in the forest surrounding his mindscape. Theo felt pressure building up in his head, mouth and throat dry, eyes holding back tears. His voice changed pitches sometimes, as if someone else was trying to speak with his mouth.

“I had a dream over the holidays.” The budding prophet looked at him questioningly, asking what it was about, the speaker of the gods comforting a rabid beast.

“My monster was chasing me through this forest, but I managed to hide away from it.” Theo didn't say anything about his referring to the creature as a ‘monster’, but did seem to contemplate what the dream could have meant. Harry felt his spine pop, his body stretching into oblivion. A low warning growl reverberated through his skull.

“Are you scared of it?”

He let out a shaky sigh, the golden walls keeping him safe were still holding strong.

“Terrified.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to make the chapters longer now that I'm only posting once a day, but this one is the normal length cuz last night I wasn't able to get a head start on it, so this entire chapter was written today.  
> Love you all!


	32. We Were Doomed From the Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo has a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Horror, gore, torture. All that usual fun stuff.

_“Thirteen is an unlucky number for a reason.”_

_He was hiding, curled up under a bed, laying perfectly still and trying not to make any noise. He could hear the unsteady breathing from another in the room, she was being too loud, far too loud. Theo hugged his legs, nails digging into the fabric of his sleep pants-closing his eyes and pretending he didn't exist. Her breathing picked up, and a muffled sob echoed through the room. He curled up tighter, face buried into his knees, the dusty rug underneath the bed giving some sort of relief for the uncomfortable position. A low warning growl sounded from outside the room, and the girl gave a shriek of terror. He opened his eyes, it was coming... it had heard her._

_The door creaked open, long fingers brushed the carpet._

_“It was all doomed from the start, really.”_

_The fingers were coated with blood. Sharp, sharp claws brushing gently against the shag rug, almost as if petting it._

_“They were doomed from the start.”_

_A low growl reverberated around the room. It was horrific, changing pitches and tones with the effect of several people-no, several vocal cords-all making the same noise at once. The growl tapered off with a woman crying, his mother. He curled up tighter, the thing knew he was there, it was greeting him with her voice._

**_“You_ ** _were doomed from the start, Theodore.”_

_The fingers moved forward, long, impossibly thin legs coming into view. He wasn't the one being hunted-no, this thing wasn't here for him-but the knowledge that someone would die soon was a horrifying one._

_“Thirteen is an unlucky number.”_

_A sudden screeching noise broke though the silence, rattling his bones and forcing tears out of his eyes. It was so much worse than the growl. So, so much worse. There was an ear splitting scream in response and the creature lunged, tearing into its prey. Dark red blood oozed out of the girl and the rug greedly absorbed it. The long fingers and pointed claws tore into her corpse, crunching bone and ripping muscle. As the thing bent down to eat, he caught sight of long deer horns, coated in drying blood._

_“A monster, he called it? I'm tempted to agree.”_

_He shut his eyes tightly, only opening them when he was sure the monster was gone. Peaking through the cracks of his eyelids, he found himself in a burning astronomy tower, hidden out of sight under a strange silky material. Crouched in a dark corner, he watched the room turn to ash with a passive face. He was assured safety here, whatever had created this carnage still had its mind intact._

_Theo heard the flapping of wings, and he turned his head slightly, there was another creature, flying into the burning building. All he could see were long, white wings._

_“Phoenixes are rather funny, don't you think?”_

_The pair of wings shifted, revealing only a leathery arm-a tallon, he realized-that was coated with fire. The creature was seemingly admiring the flames licking its skin. Unbothered by this, Theo slowly turned his head back to the room, watching with detached emotions as a support beam fell, only creating more damage to the destroyed room. The winged fire-beast didn't even flinch, sitting down at the edge of the tower calmly, looking out and seemingly star-gazing._

_“They burn themselves up only to keep existing afterwards.”_

_He stood, the silky fabric still wrapped around him tightly. Stepping over the fire-it didn't even burn-he listened to the voice echoing in his skull. It was a woman's voice, soothing and kind, but grating in a way that he couldn’t describe. The voice had an edge to it that revealed the woman's deep amusement at his predicament, he hated her instantly._

_“The ability to destroy without being destroyed is a much deadlier trait.”_

_He reached the quickly dilapidating stairs, slowly making his way down, leaving the angel behind him._

_“Demons and angels. Ha! You don't stand a chance, little prophet.”_

_He felt shadows surround him, and he closed his eyes, breathing in fresh air. Opening them once more, he found himself in a dark corner-the sudden need to hide growing stronger every second. He slunk further into the shadows, crouching down in an effort to make himself appear smaller or, even better, just disappear. An amused laugh rang out in the silence, insane and angry, promising harm and destruction. Feet pounded onto the stone, a person took labored breaths, wheezing and panting, fighting for more time._

_“Chaos. That’s what will greet you.”_

_A person sped past, barely a blur to his eyes. They rounded a corner, running from whoever was making that insane cackle. They disappeared from his line of sight, and the laughter only grew louder, grew closer._

_A foot came into view, he held his breath. Dark fingers were wrapped around a deadly looking dagger, he didn't dare glance up to see their face, already knowing. A sinking feeling of dread filled his stomach, he didn't move-he forgot how to._

_“Morals are easily altered at such an age, thirteen.”_

_The boy rounded the bend after his victim, sharp dagger scratching teasingly across the stonework. Slow, steady...and then not. Quick as a viper he was off after the poor person, hair-raising cackle changing in pitch till he could distinctly hear something else added to it-something older, deadly and angry-the sound of two bodies falling to the floor and a brief struggle should have drowned out the voice’s next words, but it rattled through his skull anyway._

_“Fun-loving mischief breeds bloody bloody chaos.”_

_The sound of a knife stabbing into flesh and tearing skin forced something out of him, an admission that he was horribly out of his element. He wasn’t the hunted, he wasn't hurt by the flames, the knife to the back was not for him, but at any moment they could be. He could be turned against in an instant and he would be powerless to stop it._

_The deed seemingly done, the boy's laughter tapered off, the sound of something being dragged filling its place. It made him shudder, the sound was slow and steady, promising the same for anyone else who dared to step in the way of a god's will. He watched the young teen drag a body slowly around the bend, blood trail as slow and sluggish as his movements._

_“They never stood a chance for normality. Calamity loves them far too much.”_

_Arms grabbed a hold of him from behind and he was pulled backwards into darkness once more, a kiss landed softly on his cheek._

_“Revel in me, little prophet. Entertain me with your suffering.”_

_Green eyes lit up in the darkness, a pale green_ **_very_ ** _unlike Harry’s. These eyes were cold, cold and twisted and cruel and sadistic._

_The eyes of Fate watched him with glee._

_“Cry for me, you poor little thing.”_

_He was forced to comply, being suddenly ripped to pieces by unimaginable pain. His eyes were burning, his back was splitting open, snakes were coiling up his arms and knotting around his soul, he could feel his skull trying to split in half._

**_It hurt so much that he couldn't even be sure that he existed anymore._ **

_He screamed, living and feeling and experiencing and_ **_reveling_ ** _in the destructive power of Fate as she forced him to bear witness to her handiwork._

_“We were doomed from the start.”_

_Was that his voice? Was he the one speaking now? The pain was unimaginable, and the woman was laughing uproariously as he continued to scream. He couldn’t comprehend who he was anymore, the agony filing up every crevice of his soul, swallowing him up and forcing him down. Was this the cruciatus curse? Was this the burning agony of hell?_

_“Take hold of this pain, little prophet, it will guide you to greatness.”_

_He continued to scream as another kiss was planted on his cheek, and the twisted green eyes faded from view._

* * *

Theo jolted awake, arms shaking and headache worse than ever. Taking deep gulps of air he tried to comprehend his dream, and found that he remembered most of it with incredible clarity. It was a promise, a warning, and a macabre performance all rolled up into one. A sinking feeling of dread pooled in his stomach, weighing him down. His entire body shook from the pain, he could still feel his nerves on fire.

Taking another deep breath, he slowly moved to the side of the bed-his muscles were aching-and slipped on his slippers, padding to the door as he shrugged on his bathrobe. Creaking open the dorm room door with a wince, he moved slowly to the baths, intent on soaking his aching muscles in hot water.

Opening the door, he quietly made his way to one of the bath rooms, stopping quite suddenly when he caught sight of a figure standing near the mirrors. Whirling around, he took in the prone form of one Harry Potter, his nose pressed up against the mirror, hands clutching the sides of the counter. He was staring-unblinking-into the mirror, his eyes glowing faintly. 

“Harry.”

No reply, the boy was lost to the world, too focused inward to hear him. Theo turned and walked to one of the bath rooms, now ignoring the boy and his chilling stance-this happened far too often for him to be bothered anymore.

Sinking into the scalding water ten minutes later, Theo finally managed to relax. The water sloshed gently, and he slouched against the sides of the tub, trying to ignore the pain he was feeling or the overwhelming sense of helplessness that was welling up inside of him.

He sank further into the water, feeling his eyes burn with pained tears. He let them fall, some experiences were well deserving to be cried over, and this was most certainly one of those times. Theo didn't leave the baths till just before breakfast ended, not wanting to confront his friends. 

When he saw Harry sitting in charms, seemingly fine and with normal eyes, Theo forced himself to ignore the memory of sharp claws and bloodied horns.

**We were doomed from the start.**

* * *

Harry was slouched into his seat during Defense Against the Dark Arts, pretending he wasn’t plotting a man's imprisonment in one of the worst wizarding prisons in the world. His ‘inconsistencies’ list was a good twenty feet of parchment long, filled to the edges with obvious time overlaps, plot holes, incorrect names, and just plain shitty writing (because those books were horrid, let's be honest). He was finally finished with all of it though, and was planning to send it off with an inconspicuous school owl, Hades being much too distinctive.

“-and _that's_ how I managed to impact the vampire so strongly, he was unable to eat anything but lettuce for the rest of his days-” Draco was mouthing along to the speech, snake earring swishing around as his head bobbed along with his overblown (read obnoxiously frivolous) movements. Harry smiled warmly, unable to stop himself from laughing lightly at the other boy's antics.

“Ah. Mr. Potter! Is something about my daring exploits funny to you?” Lockhart had something out for him ever since the first dueling club meeting. Which was fine by him, Harry enjoyed testing the boundaries of disrespect.

“Well sir, I just couldn't help but notice that you were fighting said vampire precisely a week after you _claimed_ you were in the alps fighting the yeti. I just found it funny how you managed to get halfway across the world without any sort of portkey.”

Lockhart met his eyes viciously from across the room, Harry held his gaze. The entire room was dead silent-even the gryffindors were watching the standoff with wide eyes.

“Are you insinuating, Mr. Potter, that I am somehow untruthful in my claims?” Lockhart’s voice was icy, and the rest of the class shuffled, nervous. Harry had witnessed anger more terrifying than Lockhart could comprehend, and his tone carried more promise of violence than the man could ever hope to match.

“What I am insinuating, professor, is that you tell an awful lot, but never show. Physical proof is _far_ more important than ink on parchment.”

Lockharts eyes narrowed further, “detention, Mr. Potter.”

_Perfect._

The smile on Harry's face was all teeth, “Of course, Professor.”

* * *

“What a badass!” Tracy was dancing around him on their way out of the classroom, celebrating his domination in the battle of wills they all bore witness to.

Blaise leaned over to Harry, “Badass?”

“Muggle term meaning ballsy but in a cool way.”

“Ah.”

“The way you two just glared at each other-oh merlin I would have shit my pants!” She grabbed him by the hands, twirling around and celebrating. The other boys laughed along, also finding the interaction incredibly gratifying.

“What are you going to do to him during your detention?” Theo spoke up from the back of the pack, slipping his book into the satchel slung over his shoulder.

“Interrogate ‘im, probably.” 

Theo nodded, eyes sloped downward, thinking. “Be careful, if he really is using memory charms all willy-nilly, he could be quite dangerous.” Harry wasn't all that worried about it, if he did manage it get obliviated, Tom could just tell him what happened. Lockhart was certainly very proficient in memory charms yes, but he couldn’t obviate the both of them.

“I have a plan, don't worry.”

He wasn't even sure he could be obliviated, considering that part of being Master of Death was that he couldn't be tricked, as Death had told him so long ago. He wasn't sure if that rule only applied to compulsions and potions and such though, so there was still a certain amount of risk involved in this plan.

Branching off from the group, Harry made his way to the owlery, wanting to send off his findings to the Daily Prophet so that hopefully they'll write a story about it in the next week or so. Stepping into the noisy, smelly room, Harry held up his arm for Hades. The bird landed quietly onto his outstretched forearm, and squawked angrily at him. Petting his feathers gently, Harry held out a letter to the Dursleys, knowing that Hades would be miffed if he knew he wasn't being used for _all_ of Harry's mail. As the black owl flew off, Harry called down the school owl he had been using the year prior, and she landed gently onto his outstretched arm, much more polite and quiet than the black owl.

“Take this to Daily Prophet headquarters,” he held out the thick scroll, “and make sure they read it.”

She flew off, and he watched her go with a small smile, Draco would be paying up sooner than expected, he was sure.

* * *

It was after dinner when Theo decided to approach Harry, and ask to be let into the library. The other boy readily agreed, used to Theo’s incessant reading. The walk to the third floor girls loo was a quiet one, with neither boy talking. Once in the chamber, Theo followed Jörmungandr quietly, making an effort to memorize the way through the tunnels, and finding with slight destain that the blasted things seemed to shift around each day.

Thanking the snake, even though he couldn’t understand him, Theo walked quietly into the library, trying to come to terms with his dream. It had been a horrifying experience, watching his friends fall from grace, but it was a necessary wake up call for him.

Coming up upon the elemental magic shelf, he resolved to meet them in the middle somehow. At the moment, he was just an average second year student with average talents, and an inner eye that hadn’t even fully opened yet. He was the weakest link, and if Theo knew anything, it was that he would be the first to be cut off in the event of things getting tough. He resolved to be of some use to the group, and pulled out one of the books from the shelf. After rereading the passage on meditation of the mind, he sat down right there in front of the shelf, intent on starting right away. Settling, he fell into a deep meditation quickly, forcing himself to delve into the deep recesses of his mind and attempt to understand himself in his entirety. Good and bad, light and dark... angel and demon.

**You were doomed from the start, Theodore.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "For the plot!" I yell, as I torture another one of my readers favorite characters.  
> Also! I started my english final literally five minutes after I finished this chapter, which I had to type an entire essay for, so that was fun.


	33. Shackles of Memories Bind us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo tries to fight memories of cold green eyes and a woman singing as he grapples to understand himself.  
> Harry goes to detention, because even something as normal as that can be twisted into chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter deals with traumatic experiences, PTSD, and heavy topics that may trigger some people. Please read with caution.

“You are making this far more difficult than it has to be.”

Tom was sitting across from… Tom. The Gaunt ring Tom that is. The man was just barely out of Hogwarts, and firm in his authority over those he deemed ‘lesser men’. Tom was sorted under that category, apparently, as the ring thought that a defeated dark lord is far more pathetic than an up and coming dark lord.

“I am firm in my decisions, you pathetic little welt.”

Tom rolled his eyes, was he really this pretentious as a young man? No wonder Dumbledore hated him.

“I am the larger soul piece and therefor-”

“You are a pathetic excuse for the soul of the greatest dark lord to ever exist-”

“Would you get your head out of your ass for five bloody minutes-”

“How dare-”

“Oh forget it, you're not worth the trouble.”

Tom threw his hands up in exasperation. Standing firmly, he walked to the door and returned to his home, mentally putting the ring in the ‘too insufferable to deal with’ pile with the rest of the horcruxes. Groaning, he settled into a plush couch, rubbing his temples tiredly. It was one thing to plan about combining with the other soul shards, and another thing entirely to actually do it.

_What’s with you?_

Tom looked up to the ceiling, contemplating his son's words. He was in a bit of a funk, had been since Harry decided to fuck around and agitate a highly skilled obliviator. It didn't help matters that the boy’s detention was set for that day, and he was more than prepared to strongarm control over Harry’s body just to make sure he didn’t go and get himself killed… or worse.

_I'm constantly agitated by your stupidity is all._

_Prat._

_Leech._

Tom sighed, smiling softly. Harry had come into his mindscape a few times after their argument earlier in the year, and he had noticed the boy trying rather awkwardly to acknowledge their odd familial bond. Neither of them were very good with ‘family’ dynamics, especially considering their particular situation, but it was working as well as one could hope.

Tom frowned, something was deeply troubling him about his son's mindscape however. A few months prior it had started snowing, and hadn't let up once. This was a very strange occurrence considering that this was his _mind,_ and shouldn't really have weather _._ Tom could brush that all aside sure, but he couldn't ignore the… _thing_ in the forbidden forest. He had taken to going outside at least once a day, watching something _big_ prowl around at the edge. He couldn't get a good look at it, as the monster stuck to the shadows, but he could tell it was large… and dangerous. He was assured that he was safe however, as the thin sheen of gold wrapped around the entire perimeter was holding strong. The mental protection to keep Harry's creature inheritance at bay was doing its job for now, but it was troubling to be able to see the beast waiting for it to weaken enough to break through.

“Death?” he called, the god never showed for him, but it never hurt to try.

Silence.

_Worth a shot._

* * *

Harry made his way to the Defense classroom, mentally preparing for his detention with Lockhart. Sure, the man was a fool, but that didn't mean he wasn't a fully grown adult wizard with a fully formed core. Any child trying to best him would have to deal with their unpredictable core and a severely limited spell repertoire. Harry had to worry considerably more about the former than the latter.

Walking into the Defense classroom, Harry immediately spotted Lockhart sitting at the desk. The man had no papers surrounding him, and Harry immediately ruled out fain mail as his punishment for the day. 

“Mr. Potter, please take a seat.” The man motioned to a chair in front of the desk, Harry felt that this was Lockhart's shoddy attempt at intimidation. He took the seat silently, staring straight ahead with an unreadable expression.

_Let the games begin._

* * *

Theo was down in the Library again, meditating in front of the elemental magic bookshelf. He had made a considerable effort ever since his dream the week prior to meditate as much as possible, and had been making strides to delve deeper into his mindscape. He felt no need to build up occlumency, considering how few legemens there were in the world, it sounded counterproductive to him. 

Delving deeper into his unorganized mind, he brushed past books of knowledge and scrolls of memories, floating along to the subconscious. He had been trying to breach the barrier between conscious and subconscious for the past week, but was having very little luck.

Coming upon the barrier suddenly, he studied it thoughtfully. Appearing as some sort of mist, the barrier always spat him out into his conscious mind the second he went through. Steeling himself he pressed his hands slowly into the mist, testing the boundaries of his own ability. Finding that he couldn’t feel the mists distinct weight on the other side, he surmised that he might be able to stick his head through while keeping the rest of him on the conscious side.

Floating closer, he shut his eyes tightly and dipped his head, slowly passing a portion of his upper body through the mist.

Opening his eyes slowly he only had enough time to make out inky black hands before he was yanked the rest of the way through into darkness.

* * *

Lockhart was pacing around his chair, acting all the while like he was some sort of great scholar, “-I have no illusions that you are in any way, shape, or form, a fool-but your constant disregard for my authority in this matter is rather concerning, Mr. Potter.” The bastard had been going on like this for thirty minutes, Harry was tempted to just obliviate himself of the memory and be on his merry way. 

“No no, you are most certainly not a fool, but certain actions must be taken into account.” Honestly he wasn't even saying anything of substance, just the same basic concept over and over in different ways. Harry surmised that he must be dead and living out his worst nightmare in hell, as there was no conceivable way for this to be a legal punishment to employ onto a minor.

“-this is why I have taken it upon myself to understand your thought processes, Mr. Potter, so that I can understand your particular breed of foolhardy.”

_Kill me Tom, please._

_That seems awfully irresponsible of me._

“Therefore, I ask with the most polite sincerity possible that you may confide in me why your particular behavior appears to be directed at the notion that I am some sort-some sort of liar!”

“With all due respect professor, using large words does not make you any smarter, and I consider you a criminal, not a liar.”

Lockhart turned pink, appearing all the while like some sort of spoilt brat who wasn't getting his way. “You insult me in such a manner? Mr. Potter, how exactly could I possibly be considered a liar?”

Harry pulled a certain stack of parchment from his robe (he had several copies), taking the first off the stack and clearing his throat with a cough, “in Year of the Yeti you spend precisely one year in the alps, detailing your journey through the mountain range with the accuracy of someone who has lived in the region, but use obvious misspellings of common words.. In Voyages with Vampires, you illustrated how you had been hiking through the Romanian wilderness for several months, despite having supposedly killed the yeti a week prior.”

Lockhart turned red, “Quite you-”

Harry continued, “In Wandering with Werewolves you fend them off with an amulet passed down your family for generations, of which you have displayed in your personal museum. The amulet is Scandinavian in origin, despite your family being of the British Isles for its entire history.”

“Don't you say another word-”

Harry flipped the page, “In Gadding with Ghouls, you detailed how you trapped the last ghoul with a tea strainer, however ghouls are humanoid and therefore, human-sized. This isn't a discrepancy so much as an absurd notion of-”

Lockhart leapt to his feet with rage, pointing his wand right at Harry's chest and bellowing “Obliviate!” Harry made movement to dodge, but was caught off guard as the spell glanced harmlessly off him, ricocheting right back to Lockhart, who threw himself to the side in a remarkable display of dodging skill. The charm hit the back wall harmelesly. 

Thinking fast, Harry also rocketed out of his seat and dislodged his wand from its holster. Throwing a stunner at the man, who was halfway off the floor, he watched with wide eyes as Lockhart slumped forward once more, now unconscious. The entire altercation lasted barely five seconds, but Harry was still shaken.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and gather his jumbled thoughts into a discernible mess. Tom’s voice was also rattling through his skull, worried yelling making things all the more difficult.

_I’m fine._

_Oh you're fine?? An attack on your person with the intent of permanent amnesia and you're just bloody peachy?!_

_Yes, now shut up, I think I know what this is all about._

Tom quieted, still seeming very stressed. Harry reached into his shirt, feeling around for the chain and pulling out the emerald stone he had received from Death for Christmas. Studying it, he noted that it was pulsing green light faintly, and the gold speckles inside seemed to be glowing with power.

“Death.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, Harry craned his neck to look up at the god with a questioning look. The ponce only raised an eyebrow.

Sighing, exasperated, Harry held up the emerald with a pointed look. Athimus let out a quiet ‘ah’, and led the boy over to the chair to sit.

“It is something of my own creation that I designed for you. A delicate but unyielding crystal was imbued with my magic, much like your owl was.” That explained Hades’ odd eyes, and the green and gold coloring of the gem. “My magic not only ties an object or thing to you, but also alters its own magic to benefit you. This makes your owl fiercely loyal and very hard to kill by magical means, since that's how you lost your last one.” Harry was nodding along, still coming down from the adrenalin high. “The gem is reflective, so my magic altered that ability and made it possible for the stone to reflect spells back to the caster.”

Tom was singing Death’s praises by the end of the speech, appearing very happy that Harry would have a buffer between his occasional need to agitate people and said people’s wands. Harry however, was already coming up with an excuse to give the necklace to Draco, not even considering that he might need it more.

“Why didn't you tell me this when you gave me the bloody thing?” 

Death shrugged.

* * *

Grasping desperately at the arms that held him, Theo thrashed in his bonds, trying desperately to escape. He was surrounded by inky darkness, the thin skeletal hands that held him leaking out of the surrounding nothingness as if it was one big mass. Tears escaped his eyes as he was forced to listen to the voices whispering angrily in his ears.

_“Weak link.”_

_“Coward.”_

_“Useless little boy.”_

_“Good for nothing.”_

The voices leaked into his mind, flooding his thoughts and forcing him to comprehend his own self-hatred. More hands grasped him, and he was pulled further in.

_“Tag along.”_

_“Worthless.”_

_“Scared little orphan.”_

_“Pathetic.”_

Eyes appeared out of the dark. Cold, twisted green eyes that had haunted him at all hours of the day. Those eyes were littered around his conscious mind as well, but they were so much more malicious here. He whimpered pitifully, trying to twist away from them.

_“Demons and angels. Ha! You don't stand a chance, little prophet.”_

He was worthless. Pathetic. Theo slumped in the arms that held him, the voice growing louder and the eyes closed in on him.

_“Revel in me, little prophet. Entertain me with your suffering.”_

The arms turned to claws, tearing at his skin and shoving deep into chest, grasping at his heart and ripping deep gashes in the tissue.

_“Cry for me, you poor little thing.”_

Worthless. Pathetic. Weak Link. Coward.

_“Take hold of this pain, little prophet, it will guide you to greatness.”_

Theo collapsed.

* * *

In the waking world, Jörmungandr watched with worry as Theo and the surrounding stone shuttered. It was as if a concentrated earthquake was shaking the foundation of a three foot radius around the boy. The shelf across from him was getting the brunt of it, books only holding on due to the protection runes in place.

A sudden tremor caused a deep crack under the boy, and Jörmungandr rushed to drag him away before the crack turned into a hole. He was too late however, and the stone severed, dropping the boy down into a cavern of his own creation.

* * *

The arms were dragging him down into the depths of his mind, forcing him further and further as the inky blackness got darker and darker. Tearing... severing… cutting away at him. 

He was falling

deeper

and deeper

into darkness.

Self loathing clouded his mind, horrible memories of cruel green eyes and manic laughter. Claws brushing across carpet, talons lit aflame, dagger scratching across stone. 

Ripping flesh, burning towers, hair-raising cackles... unimaginable pain.

_“Worthless.”_

_“Pathetic.”_

_“Weak link.”_

_“Tag Along.”_

**You were doomed from the start, Theodore.**

* * *

Jörmungandr had just barely managed to catch the boy before he plummeted into the earth. He had been forced to grip the boy’s leg with his front teeth, and was worried that his venom would leak from his fangs and into the small incision wounds. Pulling Theo gently to the surface, the snake was relieved to note that the boy was clean from any venom. Curling under and around the prone body, he positioned himself so that in another cavern formed, the boy would not fall a second time.

_“~I will protect you, blessed seer, and await your return to the waking world.~”_

* * *

Harry made his way to the Slytherin commons, making a mental note to bring Theo a lunch, as the boy was probably neck deep in an ancient tome currently. 

Harry was a bit annoyed that Lockhart had tried to obliviate him, and as revenge obliviated the man of the entire interaction, and the knowledge that Harry was supposed to have detention.

Entering the commons, Harry made his way to Gemma Farley, deciding that he might as well get one issue out of the way since the Lockhart business had been such a bust.

He found her having a rather promiscuous snogging secession with Jacob Roiser, and coughed lightly to make his presence known. Not meeting her eyes, he respectfully requested her counsel for a matter of personal importance. She had almost immediately shot up from the plush couch, and politely shepherded him to a secluded part of the commons, apparently not wanting to be heard.

“What can I do for you, my Prince?” The upper years always used that title instead of Heir Potter or just Potter, except for Flint, who insisted on disrespecting him as often as possible.

“I hope you don't mind, but I have been told that you’re interested in forming an alliance, I was wondering if you could do something for me?” Her eyes lit up, family alliances always started with the beneficiary doing a favor of sort for the benefactor. Harry wasn't one for verbal gymnastics, and was always rather blunt, so this was basically him not-so-subtly giving her an in.

“Of course! What do you need?”

He considered his wording before giving an answer, “my tutor has been experimenting with willingly given unicorn hair, and I thought it prudent to give him a few locks from the unicorns in the forest, but they dont like boys.”

She practically jumped at him, it was an easy task for her all things considered, and if it gave her the option to form a family alliance? Well, she wasn't a slytherin for nothing.

“I would be happy to help you with this, when do you need the hair?” She was practically bouncing on her toes, he didn't blame her, the Farley’s weren't known for… well for anything really, and an alliance with the boy-who-lived would give them _so much_ status it was a little ridiculous.

“Anytime in the next month or so I’d say.”

“Thank you so much, I'll be sure to get that for you right away.”

* * *

Theo was tapering on the edge of oblivion, and Jörmungandr was growing worried for the boy. Wrapping tighter around him, the snake contemplated what he could possibly do to help him return to a safe headspace. In Theo’s mind, he was hanging dangerously off the edge of his mindscape, gripping onto the edge of a dark cliff, slowly slipping. His surroundings were pitch black, quiet and deserted. The voices and eyes and ripping claws had left him. Left him to cling to his will with the last bit of desperation and spite that he could manage to keep with him after the siege.

He could distantly comprehend that the open air below him was alive, brushing comfortingly along his feet, tempting him to let go and sink into the depths of nothingness. His mother's singing cut through the whispers, doing nothing but tempting him further. He felt his fingers slipping further, almost wanting to fall off and into the waiting arms of his mother.

There was a hissing from above him though, cutting and menacing… but familiar. He didn't like the sound of this hissing, preferring the comforting whispers and gentle singing, but something told him that the hisses were important, that he should follow them.

Jörmungandr was hissing softly into the young boy’s ear.

_“~Do not let the darkness tempt you, blessed seer. You must hold fast to yourself, you must!~”_

Theo listened to the hissing, contemplative. It sounded very familiar, and it started to wake him from his stupor. Sighing, he gripped a little harder to the cliffside, pulling himself up just a little ways further.

_“~If you lose now, there will be no hope for the others, you are the unyielding mountain blessed seer. Do not let them move you.~”_

He had managed to pull himself halfway up the cliff, and was resting there, contemplating how close he had come to slipping off. Now that he could think clearer, he understood what this all was. 

His subconscious was littered with everything that he shoved down, all the realities of his life and how they affected him. Everything was truthful here, truthful to how he _was._ Truthful to how he perceived himself and how he viewed his own experiences.

Theo didn't like what he saw.

It was true that he was the weakest link, that his friends were skyrocketing to greatness while he floundered. It was true that he was a scared little orphan chasing after his mother's memory, but that did nothing for him. These facts did nothing to help him. The knowledge of what he was only served to prove that he couldn't continue that way any longer if he wanted to survive. 

Theo dragged himself onto the edge, and stretched himself out onto the solid ground, ignoring the voices as they grew louder, as the singing grew sweeter. Ignored his mother's voice begging for mercy, ignored the memory of her glassy eyes and blood on the carpet, his father being dragged away by Aurors. He pulled himself up and walked blindly through the shadows, listening to the hissing as it guided him back to consciousness.

The shadows formed thick shackles on his limbs as he re-entered his conscious mind, forever tethering him to the darkness. 

He woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to call myself an expert in mental illnesses, because I most certainly am NOT, and if I get things wrong I will alter the story to be more accurate.  
> I also want to note that what Theo is dealing with in this chapter are heavily repressed emotions and trauma, and this isn't an instant fix to what he is going through, it is an admittance that he is going through something, and is now making an effort to understand how those things affected him. Its a panic attack, not a instant cure all.


	34. Sleep Deprivation, Voices, and Glitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thasin respectfully removes herself from the castle, and Tracy Davis returns with a vengeance as Lockhart's Valentines Day fiasco renders her breakfast a glittery mess. Blaise is considering taking a nap, but only at the insistence of his sleep-deprivation induced hallucination.

_ “~You know  _ _ Jörmungandr, I think you’ve scared my snake away. _ _ ~” _

Harry had come down to get Theo that afternoon, and upon seeing the boy lying across the basilisk, appearing extremely exhausted and  Jörmungandr extremely fretful, he quickly shepherded the other boy off to his dorm for a nap. After which he settled down to work on his own side-project, that being his necromancy books.

_ “~Whatever do you mean, intriguing one?~” _

_ “~I haven't seen her since I first came down here.~” _

He had turned to the snake and requested that the next time Theo came down,  Jörmungandr would keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t study himself into an early grave. This conversation then developed further till the topic you are hearing now.

_ “~Hm. Well it isn't my fault your companion is a coward.~” _

Harry rolled his eyes, Thasin was a very independent snake, all things considered. So if she was scared off for months on end by  Jörmungandr, then that was her problem-but it annoyed him that she had galavant off and didn't even tell him where she was going.

_ “~I suppose you have a good point.~” _

Harry had been studying his ancestors' tomes, trying to find any sort of advantage he could have over Dumbledore. So far he had come to the conclusion that if he wished, it would be possible to command an army of intelligent inferni if he put enough magic into it-which was bloody incredible, but would probably drain the  _ fuck _ out of his reserves if he tried it out at twelve. There was also talk about his ‘powers awakening to their full potential’ if he attempted to raise the dead that were buried in a potter's field, whatever that was. He made a note to research that tidbit further, seeing potential in getting more powerful no matter what the situation called for.

_ “~What was Theo's deal today? I've never seen him that exhausted before.~”  _ Harry was concerned for his friend, after coming down to the library, he had found Theo in a state, curled up on Jörmungandr and seemingly trying to disappear into the large snakes scales. It worried him, as Theo had been working himself to the bone for months, and the last week especially he had been pale, jumping at shadows. Harry also noticed that he was refusing to make eye contact with him, which was odd, and worried Harry slightly about his creature inheritance somehow affecting his friend. Jörmungandr wasn't betraying specifics about the day though, and Harry couldn't get anything more than an assurance that everything was fine, and a sudden change in subject.

_ “~He was merely tired. Tell me about this cowardly snake companion of yours?~” _

Harry admitted defeat,  _ “~Well she's a sassy little shit, and obnoxiously colorful with both her scales and her language.~” _

_ “~She sounds remarkably like you, I will endeavor to find her so that we may discuss your various exploits.~”  _ Polite speak for ‘I’ll hunt her down to get some juicy gossip’.

_ “~If you do manage to find her I would greatly appreciate it if you forced her back to the castle.~” _

Harry put Theo’s worrying behavior out of his mind, focusing instead on his necromancy studies and the living legend in front of him.

_ I'm sure he’s just overworked again. _

* * *

Days turned to weeks, and Harry observed with a concerned gaze as Blaise lost more and more sleep, bloodshot eyes and naps during classes became commonplace for the boy. Theo also appeared a wreck, and was getting worse every day. Harry had watched the two decline sharply through January, and now that it was firmly into February, he felt that it was prudent to figure out what was wrong with the both of them.

With Theo he could figure it out rather quickly, he was holled up in the library with Jörmungandr more and more often, and Harry no longer needed to open the door for him-the boy having memorized the parseltongue necessary, now able to do a passable imitation. Harry figured that he was probably still working on his elemental magic, or some other sort of ancient magic that caught his fancy. All he could really do for Theo was make sure he had that bracelet that Blaise gifted him on, and ask Jörmungandr politely to make sure he was fed.

Blaise was a different story however. The boy was practically a recluse now, holling up in the dorm with parchment and quill, constantly practicing the runework for his pledge to the point of obsessiveness. He was far more self-destructive than Theo was, and physically fought being interrupted for any reason. Harry had taken to dragging him out of his seat, and sitting on his chest as Draco forced high calorie foods down his throat. It wasn't an instant fix, and Harry couldn't wait for the day he was over and done with the stupid pledges, but for now it was keeping the idiot alive over the weekends.

Classes were another thing. Harry could probably sleep through the entire semester and still manage first in rank, but that was just because he had already been through school once AND had been taught by Tom for the majority of his adolescence, so he was hardly a fair comparison to a normal twelve year old. Theo was still managing fairly well in classes, though he seemed withdrawn and less inclined to do practical work. Blaise though, was  _ completely _ ignoring classes, skipping half of them and not paying attention to the rest. Considering that little Victoria White had come up to Harry a few times and asked if Blaise was done with his side project, Harry could only conclude that he was completely focused on this pledge, putting aside everything else till it was done.

It made some sense, there were three pledges after all, and Blaise would have to do all of them in the tight window between his birthday on the 21st of April and the 1st of september when school was back in session. That was six months to do three pledges, each of which required intense magical power, perfected runework, and a considerable amount of recovery time. He would probably be doing them almost back to back, with a month of recovery time in between.

Harry leaned back in his desk chair, glancing at the back of the boy in question. Blaise would be an even bigger wreck after his birthday, and he needed someone to take on the grunt work. Harry and Draco had been doing his homework for him, and while his participation and practical work was hot garbage at the moment-Blaise was never truly on the trend to being a good student-the written work the two were doing for him was enough to keep his grades afloat.

“Oi, Draco, fancy a walk?” He wanted to talk about his christmas present with the blonde.

Nodding, Draco got off his bed and quickly grabbed his boots, Harry doing the same. It was nearly ten minutes later when they stepped out into the unfortunately warming weather, Draco already chattering away.

“-Blaise is insufferable honestly, I couldn't count on one hand the amount of times the bastard has pranked me this month, mostly because he hasn't! Can you believe that? Not once in the past four weeks has he pranked me a single bloody time, it's as if your talk with him scared the idea right out of his mind-”

“Draco, I actually wanted to thank you for my Christmas present, since I haven't had the chance to do so yet.” The blonde stopped speaking, eyes widening slightly, before quickly adapting to the new topic.

“Oh! Yes, it was more of a gift from my mother really, she had somehow learned that your original bracelet went missing after your parents died, and thought you would appreciate having a new one.”

“It was very kind of her, please tell her I say thank you. You do realize though, that this means you'll have to get me two birthday presents on my thirteenth to even it out.”

“Oh sod off.”

Draco shoved him, and Harry sent of a stinging hex in retaliation, the both of them laughing all the while.

It was a custom in wizarding culture to have a bracelet created with your child's birthstone embedded into strong leather. It was meant to be enchanted by one of the parents with various protection carms and such, and the child would wear it to their magical majority at seventeen. When Harry had learned that not only were they a thing, but his had gone missing after the attack on Godric's Hollow, he had been irate, knowing who had probably taken it from him. He had no idea how Narcissa Malfoy had learned about it, but Harry was immensely thankful that she had gotten him another one. It was always wrapped securely around his left wrist now, Tom having embedded it with an absurd amount of protection magics.

The rest of the walk they talked about inconsequential things, too wrapped up in the conversion to contemplate that the next day was Valentine's day. Harry was enjoying himself so much that he forgot about Lockhart and what would be out in full force the next morning.

* * *

Harry remembered now.

Standing in the entryway to the Great Hall, he observed the  _ very  _ pink decor with a feeling of detached acceptance as Draco raved about ‘proper Saint Valentine's Day practices’ next to him. He could distantly hear Tracy loudly complaining about glitter in her hair, Harry himself had copious amounts of it weighing down his untamable mane already, and Theo was holding his satchel full of books to his chest protectively. Blaise hadn't even shown up to breakfast.

He had to take a moment to observe the decorations, they were more obnoxious than he remembered. There was some sort of enchantment that made the ceiling rain pink glitter, and every available surface was covered with love notes and even more glitter. Harry wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“This is ridiculous, I can't believe the  _ nerve  _ of that man.” Harry sat down next to the ranting Tracy quietly, the  _ also _ ranting Draco not far behind him. Theo, it seemed, had dubbed the day pointless and had gone back to the dorm.

“Valentine's day is supposed to be a day of affection for those you are close to and this man has turned it into some… some sort of joke!” Harry could agree that this was a joke, as he watched his eggs, which were acclimating glitter at an astounding rate.

_ Thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump _

Harry felt a sudden rush of adrenalin, if Lockhart didn't get shipped off to Azkaban, he would kill the bastard himself. He cracked his neck, slowly turning to the head table with a look of incomprehensible hunger. Chatter blended into the background as he focused in on the pink robed menace himself. His eyes started to warm, fingers slowly scratching at the table.

_ Wouldn't it be easier to just kill him now and be done with it? _

He felt something prowling around inside his mind, scratching at the walls keeping it at bay.

_ Harry! _

He snapped out of it, quickly turning back to his glittery breakfast, much more tense than before.

_ What the hell was that? _

_ I don't know but you better not let it happen again, that thing behind the wall was trying to claw its way through! Control yourself. _

Harry took a deep breath to settle his mind, he was still human, he was Harry, everything was fine. Tom was still safe inside his mindscape, the protections were still in place and not going anywhere for a few months left. Everything was fine.

“I'm going to write a formal complaint to the board of governors to get that man’s teaching license revoked!” Tracy was still off on a tangent, Harry focused back in on her instead of the adrenalin that was still making his ears buzz.

“I honestly doubt he even has one.” Greengrass seemed just as annoyed as Tracy, but was hiding it much better. Poking at his glittery eggs with disgust, Harry turned to look around for something that wasn't covered in sparkles. Finding nothing, he admitted defeat and decided to stop by the kitchens for lunch and dinner, actually wanting to eat that day.

In all honesty, Harry was rather impressed with Lockhart. Despite being a narcissistic coward, he had actually been quite clever while in school, and got excellent NEWTs in charms and care of magical creatures, though he was rather average on most practical exams. That all landed him in an equally average white-colar job, but he had managed to skyrocket his fame by being the kind of cunning that would make any slytherin impressed.

He was still a bloody ponce though, and a criminal, so Harry hardly respected the man, despite his resourcefulness.

The rest of breakfast had Harry waiting for the other shoe to drop with tense shoulders.

He knew that Lockhart would employ a bunch of dwarves to deliver valentines day messages during classes, he watched them march up the isles during breakfast after all. He also knew that last time Ginny Weasley sent him one, and he had been properly humiliated by the entire experience. What he didn't know was if he would manage to not kill the poor dwarf if the same thing happened this time.

He got his answer soon enough.

After Theo re-joined them in herbology, the ‘cupids’ quickly started streaming in, one of them belining straight to Greengrass.

_ Tracy is an absolute angel. _

The girl was far more stubborn than the dwarves could ever hope to match, and the second that one came anywhere near their group in any class, she would immediately and adamantly refuse to let them go any further. Be it by threatening physical harm, actual physical harm (when she could get away with it), or just jinxing them black and blue, the girl employed all methods in an effort to keep them off of her brood. Draco joined in at some point, needing an outlet for his ritus fury, and Harry found great amusement in watching the two of them nearly drop-kick a small horde of the poor sods away in an effort to be rid of all the sappy messages. Word had gotten around quickly after that, and they were left alone the rest of the day.

* * *

Blaise was hearing a voice.

There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with hearing voices, as humans did have ears to hear noise and mouths that made noises, but the fact that there was no one around and the voice was from his head, Blaise could reasonably infer that he was likely going insane.

He was writing runes, practicing a smaller part of the larger rune scheme he would make on his birthday for the body-centric pledge. Rubbing his eyes to clear away the tiredness, Blaise pressed on, ignoring the fact that it was morning and he stayed up the entire night. 

_ That rune is wrong, and you need to be looser in your strokes. Much too stiff. _

He threw down the quill and rubbed his eyes harder, of all the things to be hearing, he's been saddled with rune critiques?

_ Well at least I'm helpful, the others would never even consider speaking to one of you worshipers before the final pledge. They're awfully stuffy, you know. _

He ignored the voice, Blaise hadn't even considered speaking back to it yet, feeling that that would be crossing the line between probably crazy and absolutely batshit.

_ Maybe I need to get more sleep. _

_ I agree! You couldn’t even pledge yourself to a horse in this kind of state. In fact, I demand that you sleep at once. _

He thumped his head down onto the desk in frustration, wishing that the voice would stop saying weird things that didn't make sense. Staring blankly at the blurry rune work as his eyes crossed, Blaise felt the urge to close his eyes and sleep more and more impossible to resist. Maybe the voice had a point, he was obviously going insane and needed more sleep. Besides, it wasn't as if he didn’t know the necessary runes, it was just that he could barely keep his eyes open at this point and maybe he should just sleep a little bit. Only half an hour at the most, and then he’ll be right back to it.

He was asleep before his eyes fully shut, relaxing fully into the chair.

* * *

Thasin slithered through thick foliage, hunting for her new favorite snack: fairies. When she had learned that there was a fifty foot long  _ king of snakes _ in the castle, she took it upon herself to respectively remove her body from the king's vicinity, and now stayed primarily in the forest that Harry didn't like very much. She had forgotten what he had called it, the Illegal Forest, perhaps? It hardly mattered in the end, the illegal forest had a much wider variety of tasty things to munch on, and she was growing at a rapid rate because of it! Not only that, but she felt that something about her was changing, as she no longer got sleepy in cold weather, now hunting at all times of the year with ease. The little fairies were her favorite, as the strange smell in the air that Harry had called ‘magic’ was very concentrated in those little fairies, and they made her feel all sorts of funny things.

She was currently making her way slowly through the underbrush, having found that there was a tiny little grouping of the small humanoids. Catching sight of them, she slowed down, careful to not alert them to her being there. Lunging forward, fangs dripping venom that was  _ just _ lethal enough to kill the creatures, she snagged one right out of the air, the others fleeing quickly from the scene. Thasin swallowed the now very dead fairy easily and quickly moved back into the brush, stalking the rest of the creatures with careful eyes.

She would return to Harry once the warm weather came again, but for now she would hunt to her heart's content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of a break from the chaotic plot then it is actual... plot, though I consider Theo and Blaise's separate descents into insanity especially important to future plot points, but everything else is mostly for the laughs and minor little things. Thasin though, is always important, always.


	35. Tread Carefully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the year looms ever nearer, and with it: summer. Harry has far too much to do and not enough time to do it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: brief mentions of past graphic scenes (it's literally like three sentences, should be fine by ya know).

Harry hated this stupid fucking forest.

Weaving around the trees and dodging low hanging branches, he considered all his reasons for coming into the forest, (not for the first time) and sadly found them worth the potentially fatal trip. The bow of  Skaði was an absolute beauty, but he had no bloody clue how to use it. Even the beginners guide to archery book that Theo had gotten him for Christmas was only a step up from useless, the bow had some sort of magical properties that made using it the normal way seemingly impossible. Either that or he had horrid aim, it was a toss up at this point.

Grunting, Harry crouched down to crawl under a fallen tree that was blocking his path, wishing that he had the smarts to sneak out with a torch or something, his lumos wasn't much of a long distance light, and was rather useless in this scenario. 

“So you've come to receive our teachings at last, son of darkness.” 

Harry jolted upwards and smacked the back of his head on the fallen tree, cursing profusly. The currently unidentified voice waited patiently for him to stumble out from under it, now dazed and even more cross than he was before. Dusting himself off, Harry looked upwards with an exasperated look, recognizing Firenze for his distinctive white hair.

“I suppose I am yes,” he sighed, already regretting his decisions quite heavily.

“And you will be removing the fae-eating snake as well, yes?”

_ What? _

“Pardon?”

Firenze looked troubled, “I suppose she is not your familiar then?”

Harry was increasingly confused with this conversation, “I don't have a familiar, at least I don't recall having one.”

The centaur seemed to accept this, and continued with conversation, “the stars spoke of you eventually seeking our teachings, I had hoped you would have come sooner, but it was not meant to be.”

Harry's eye twitched, it wasn't his fault he was going through two separate puberties at the same bloody time. “I was a tad busy, I'm afraid.”

This was also accepted with a nod, and the boy found himself missing Bane and his bluntness just a tad-Firenze was spacy as all hell, and a terrible conversationalist.

“Well, shall we be off then?” Harry nodded, following after the centaur as he guided him through the trees, occasionally pointing out fairy colonies that had been massacred by the supposed ‘fae-eating snake’, Harry had never heard of something so ridiculous before, and he had a megalomaniac father figure that lived in his head, so he  _ knew _ ridiculous.

They came upon a clearing full of other centaurs, all of which seemed to glance at him with interest. He soon realized that they were actually glancing at the bow slung over his shoulder.

“Ah, son of darkness, so good to see you in fine health.” Harry smiled a little, nodding at Bane.

“Not going to tie me to another tree tonight, are you?”

The centaur laughed uproariously at that, “it centinally depends on what I can surmise of your bowmanship.”

Harry winced, that was  _ not  _ reassuring.

“Well I suppose you would like a closer look at it then?” Harry questioned, taking the bow of Skaði off his shoulder and holding it out to Bane, who practically jumped away from it, wincing.

“I'm afraid not, son of darkness, that bow is not for hands of warmth.” 

“I have a name you know.”

He was ignored in favor of the mythical bow, and the centaurs crowding around him, looking at (but not touching) the white wood with thinly veiled awe and jealousy. Eventually, after much questioning and an incredible amount of patience on his part, Harry was eventually led away from the main group by Bane, who wished to see what he could do.

What he could do was apparently quite pathetic, and Bane took a moment afterwards to laugh at him.

“Alright alright, what exactly do you suggest I do to fix my shite aim?”

This only made him laugh harder, “son of darkness, you aren't even channeling your magic through the bow!”

“I'm supposed to do that?”

At this rate, the centaur was going to get a cramp from laughing too hard, “it is a magical bow, I suppose it works much the same way your people's wands do. Try to channel your magic through it as though you were going to cast a spell.”

Taking the centaur’s advice, Harry pulled the string taut, resting it on his lower lip in an effort to steady it, on the passing advice of Bane. Closing his eyes momentarily, Harry fed his magic into the bow, concentrating it into the arrow head.

“No, not like that. Allow the magic to reverberate through the entire weapon, from the bow neck to the string, down through the arrow tail and finally, the head.”

Harry relaxed himself slightly, eyes still closed. He created a sort of circuit with the bow, magic flowing into it through his right hand, into the string, through the arrow and to the head and neck, and out his left hand. Opening his eyes, he took a slight breath before releasing it.

The arrow whizzed past the painted target and into a bush a few feet to the right, freezing the entire thing in a thick casing of ice instantly.

“Hm. Well your aim is still rather pitiful, but your magic is channeling quite well. Keep practicing like that, and return next month so I may review your progress.”

He was sheparded out of the colony quickly after that, and Harry didn't even have the chance to ask him about the prediction from last year.

* * *

February passed quickly and Hogwarts quickly found itself creeping into March. The papers were printing editorials of Lockhart’s books and the various inconsistencies Harry had sent to them at an astounding rate. Rita Skeeter had apparently latched onto the story and was writing like no tomorrow, her loyal readers streaming into the ministry demanding some sort of investigation into the man. Nothing happened for a while, not even when the Hogwarts students started sending stories of Lockhart’s incompetence to their parents in response to the articles. It wasn't until an anonymous letter to the Daily Prophet detailing an obliviation attempt by the man on a student that the ministry was finally forced to investigate him. They said that it was a slow process, but the entire scandal made the Slytherins love him and Lockhart sweat profusely, so regardless of what happened, Harry considered it a win.

Farley had returned to him a few weeks into March, and had proudly given him a long lock of unicorn hair. He thanked her warmly and set out to write her parents a letter, determined to make the alliance a reality. The letter was brief and formal, but he could only assume that Farley wrote out a much more detailed and excited letter than he did, and there was no need for specifics. Reading over it one last time, Harry made sure that it was to his liking before sending it off.

**Mr. and Mrs. Farley,**

**I would like to first introduce myself so that if we ever do cross paths, we may all know each other. I am Heir Hadrian James Potter, known by many as the boy-who-lived. Upon my sorting to the house of Slytherin, your daughter Gemma has been cordial, welcoming, and extremely kind. It is due to an extremely kind favor from her that I find myself requesting a more permanent companionship between the houses of Farley and Potter.**

**I would like to make it clear that this is most certainly a request for a family alliance, and is most certainly** **not** **for a marriage contract.**

**-Heir Hadrian James Potter of the houses Potter and Black.**

Harry’s paranoia over being roped into some sort of marriage contract unwillingly was what eventually led him to write that last line, but other than the mild embarrassment it was a smart play in his eyes.

Setting his letter aside to dry, he eagerly tore into one that Hades had just brought to him, having recognized the distinctive seal pressed into ruby red wax.

**Heir Peverell,**

**Your wit knows no bounds, young Heir. I would be ecstatic to have you in my home, if it were not for your headmaster I would be more than happy to do so. However it is my deep regret to say that me and Albus are no longer of pleasant company. Until I can be assured by you that the esteemed headmaster is not someone considered by you to be good company, then I am afraid that you will not be welcomed into my place of residence.**

**It is most relieving to know that you were not only aware, but making the effort to find your heritage. I know little of the Peverells besides the legend of the hallows, and you likely know much more in regards to them, but if you would prefer, I would be more than happy to help you with your research.**

**-Eager, Sir Nicolas Flamel**

Pulling out a piece of parchment, Harry settled down to write a letter in response, more than happy to have a genius immortal helping him find more on the Peverells, even if he already knew where all the hallows were.

* * *

March bled into April as Harry continued to go to classes, write to Flamel and work out a usable contract for an alliance with the Farleys. All this blended into itself and became one mass of stress and work, so when Harry finally slipped out to forest-that-seemed-intent-on-killing-him, he was shocked that a month had already passed. Blaise’s birthday was fast approaching, and Harry felt like the year was slipping right through his hands like sand. In a month and a half he would be on the train back home, and his birthday was soon after that.

It was worrying, as Draco's birthday was just barely a month before his, at the end of June on the 24th, so he would be first transforming a month earlier than Harry. The shorter boy would have more time to recover, which was good, but Harry wasn't sure just how bad it might be for him if he only had the month of August to recover from his first shift.

_ If nothing else, the first month of school will be excruciating. _

After his lesson with Bane, where he learned nothing except that he still had awful aim, Harry returned to the castle under his invisibility cloak. He was jittery, feeling unaccomplished, he had yet to do anything of true substance, and there was still far too much to get done. Changing directions suddenly, Harry made his way to the chamber, intent to start his experiments with the unicorn hair. Him and Tom had been going over all the potential combinations with the hair that could make a potent poison. Tom was insistent on a diluted mix of african sea salt and lionfish spine, but Harry felt like acromantula venom would do better than the lionfish. In an effort to compromise, they decided to try both,among other possible combinations, and test them out on summoned rats to figure out their qualities.

Harry eventually made it into the chamber, and followed  Jörmungandr through the ever-changing tunnels, brainstorming.

_ “~-and after that we were planning on trying out bloodroot, since it's already proven to be an awfully potent poison ingredent.~” _

He was running through all their ideas out loud as Jörmungandr listened quietly, seemingly contemplating something.

_ “~I personally think it would be a good idea to try ptolemy, but Tom thinks it would dissolve the cauldron.~” _

Jörmungandr interrupted suddenly, having come to some sort of decision.  _ “~Would you like to use my venom as well?~” _

The offer brought a few things to the table. Freely given unicorn hair combined with freely given basilisk venom might make an interesting reaction, as they were extremely different but both freely given, which could potentially create something interesting. Tom was adamant that it wouldn't make a poison though. Harry accepted the offer anyway, experimentation meant following several potential avenues after all.

Settling down at a desk that already had the potion ingredients and cauldron set up and ready for him, Harry got to work. He decided to try Tom's idea first, because the man would be annoying him about it till he did. He crushed the lionfish spines before adding them to the cauldron of purified water mixed with the african sea salt. Setting that aside to steep under low heat.

He had to handle the unicorn hair with delicate care. Using only one hair was extremely important, as all the calculations he had made were based around only one hair per concoction, so using even one extra would throw the entire poison off.

Holding the hair up to the light to make sure that there was, indeed, only one hair, he gingerly lowered it into the cauldron. Nothing happened for a moment, before he was suddenly thrown back from a small explosion.

There was a beat of silence as he laid on the ground in a heap, contemplating his life for a few moments. Eventually, Harry calmly checked to see if he still had eyebrows (he did).

_ So, I think that's a bust. _

_ Are you alright? _

_ I’m fine, dad. _

Returning to the table with a sigh, Harry started cleaning up the mess, decidedly crossing out ‘lionfish spine’ from his notebook. It took several more tries with various different ingredients before Harry got to something that didn't immediately explode, the acromantula venom having actually taken his eyebrows off. Making a note that streeler shells didn't explode the mix, he bottled some to test later.

_ “~Jörmungandr, do you want to try your venom now?~”  _ Harry picked up a phial, holding it up to the basilisk questioningly.

Leaning down, Jörmungandr released his venom slowly into the phial, stopping only once it was almost to the brim. Thanking the snake, Harry turned back to his desk, cleaning out the cauldron and prepping for another potential explosion.

_ I don't think my heart can take another negative reaction, Leech. _

_ You don't even have a heart. _

_ It's the principal of the matter. _

Harry was also feeling the effects of so many explosions, and was a little annoyed with his eyebrows blasting off. Conjuring a shield, Harry carefully stirred the venom into another batch of the diluted african sea salt.

_ Do you recon the salt is the thing making it all explode? _

_ Every poison of incredible potency uses african sea salt as a binder. The explosions would be much worse without it. _

Harry nodded absently, focussing in again on the mixture. He watched with fascination as the sicily green venom mixed with the clear liquid and turned the entire thing a shocking shade of neon pink.

_ Well that's promising. _

_ Or damning. _

_ Ever the pessimist, eh Riddle? _

Grasping a single piece of the unicorn hair once again, Harry steeled himself, preparing for another explosion. Gently dropping the hair into the cauldron, he lept back several feet and strengthened his shield, bracing himself. 

After nothing had happened for a solid ten seconds, Harry risked it and peaked an eye open, finding that the cauldron was sitting on the table quite innocently, and certainly not ablaze. Creeping forward, he leaned over to look into the cauldron while staying as far away from it as possible.

The shocking pink color was still there, and the hair was floating at the top, some sort of golden hue sizzling out around the hair, as if a chemical reaction was taking place. Curious, Harry grabbed the stirring rod and carefully started stirring in a counterclockwise motion, waiting for the impending explosion with bated breath. Surprisingly though, all that happened was the shimmering gold color to become interspersed in the concoction as the hair was dissolved, making the entire thing appear to be a cauldron of liquid gold.

_ Well that's interesting. _

Harry bottled as much of the concoction as he could, wanting to experiment with its properties at a later date. He couldn't do much with it at the moment, as his watch told him the sun was rising in a few hours, and he wanted to get at least a few hours of sleep. That afternoon though, he would come back and experiment with it as well as the streeler shell concoction.

Thanking Jörmungandr on his way out, Harry yawned tiredly, thinking of his soft bed and warm covers longingly.

* * *

As Harry Potter settled down to sleep, another person woke with a start, a nightmare forcing her into the waking world. 

_ There was a dark, skeletal mass creeping through the woods, its eyes glowing dimly from a place deep inside the skull. It was huge, monstrous and horrible. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A scared little boy curled up in a cupboard, licking his wounds as an angry man raged on the other side, hate wards firmly in place. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A young boy pressed his hands into the side of Quirrell's head, the man falling apart before his eyes. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A child clambered around the Chamber of Secrets, splashing through the water as a blinded basilisk followed closely behind. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A young man was riding buckbeak in his third year, swooping through the sky and feeling free for the first time in so long. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A scared boy watched with horror as Cedric's body fell to the ground with a thud, light draining from his eyes. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A mourning child screamed out for his godfather as he fell through the veil, Remus holding him back. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ Tired eyes watched with horror as Snape shot a killing curse at Dumbledore, the man falling off the astronomy tower. _

_ “You know who I am, Harry.” _

_ A war ravaged man walked into the forbidden forest, accepting his death as necessary. _

_ “You don't know who I am, Luna.” _

_ A little boy carved up one of Mrs. Figg's cats behind the house, licking up the blood greedly. _

_ “It destroyed me Luna,  _ **_he_ ** _ destroyed me.” _

_ A monster sunk its arms into Pettigrews stomach, grasping for hidden organs. _

_ “You don't know what kind of monster I've become.” _

_ A demon screamed in the middle of a forest, eyes burning as a creature beyond comprehension tried to claw out of his soul. _

_ “I'm a monster, little moon. I know you, but you certainly don't know me.” _

_ The tall creature lunged, horrifying screeching bubbling up from inside its throat as its claws stretched out from the shadows towards her, intent on swallowing her whole. _

Luna Lovegood woke with a gasp, bolting up in bed. Her eyes were wild, darting around the room as if something was going to step out of the shadows and attack her. Reaching up with shaky hands, she pulled the curtains on her bed shut, feeling exposed.

The dreams were getting more and more disturbing. They had started a year or so back, and had mostly just been vague memories of a young girl's time at hogwarts. Since the start of her first year however, they were more disturbing, showing a world torn asunder by a horrible civil war. She could tell that Harry Potter was in the center of it all, that his actions were paramount. When she met him in real life though… he looked nothing like he had in her dreams. His eyes were hard, gaze calculating. He walked like some sort of animal, ready to spring forward and swallow her whole. It was a split second decision, to say that he knew her all those months ago, and the dream tonight made her wonder if it was such a good idea.

Luna had always had strange perceptions of life, she saw people's emotions and thoughts swirling around their heads, Fate must have thought she was such a silly little thing, and gifted her a few spare memories to chew on, nothing of substance of course, but enough to stir the pot. Let it never be said that a person couldn’t be a prophet and a seer at the same time.

Luna shivered, curling up into a ball. The dreams always got blurry in the morning, and she could never quite remember what was in them except for vague concepts. This one would be no different, but its message would be remembered.

**I'm a monster, Luna Lovegood. Tread carefully.**

* * *

Days passed, and Harry started spending his free time trying to figure out what the hell the golden potion was. So far it had absolutely no effect on mice, he had administered it orally, analy, and to the skin, but no dice. Either it was just a pretty liquid with no effects whatsoever, or just didn't work on mice for some reason. Harry was forced to put aside his experimentations on the 21st though, as it was Blaise’s birthday.

The italian boy had gotten a bit better with his sleep schedule, relieving Harry of some of his worry. Though, he seemed to mumble to himself occasionally, which was slightly concerning, but nothing that Harry couldn't pass off as stress related.

It was a Tuesday, and the group decided to stick to a simple celebration in the common room, as Blaise was going to be doing his first pledge that night. The presents were passed around, and Blaise thanked them all kindly for their companionship.

Theo falling asleep and subsequently out of his chair allerted the group to the late hour. Parting there, Harry and Draco pulled Theo along to the dorms, Blaise heading out the other direction to the room of requirement. Harry was forced by the secrecy vows to not tell the others of what Blaise was doing, but he personally felt that they deserved to know.

It wasn't his secret to tell though, and he settled into bed that night with a tired sigh, quickly falling asleep.

* * *

Walking slowly around a large circle drawn onto the stone with chalk, Blaise checked for any inconsistencies in his rune work. Finding none, he disrobed, and carefully knelt in the middle of the circle, where there was a small ceremonial dagger and a wooden bowl.

Cutting the back of his forearm, Blaise watched the blood drip slowly into the bowl, trying to gauge how much he needed. Guessing mostly, Blaise took a cloth to staunch the flow of blood from the wound when he decided that it was enough. Dipping a finger into the bowl, he started the slow process of writing out even more runes across his body. Some were meant to grant Loki access to his body, others were to make sure his mortal skin wouldn't tear apart at the strain of a god’s overwhelming magic.

Seemingly done with the prep work, Blaise set the bowl and dagger to the side and started to chant in old norse. The language slipping off his tongue as if he had been speaking it all his life.

**God of Mischief I call to thee,**

**of my body I kneel before you.**

**God of tricks I gift myself to thee,**

**so that my body may be used as a vessel.**

**God of knots, tangler of eternity,**

**accept my offering of servitude.**

On and on, his voice slowly raising in volume and the ambient magic swirling around him thicker and thicker. At the climax of the chanting, Blaise felt as though he was going to be torn asunder by the magic clawing at his skin. He could feel it knotting around his arms, twisting up his body like snakes. Just at the moment that he thought he might just suffocate on the heavy magic, it all seemed to shift, pulling backwards slightly.

_ Come into me, and I will invite myself into you. _

It all surged forward, crushing into him and worming into every pore, every atom of tissue till there was nothing of his body left to devour.

Blaise passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much happened in this chapter I stg. Anyway this is one of the longest chapters I've written, and is super plot heavy, but I had the option to either buckle down and write this out, or split it into two chapters. I suppose you can guess which option I chose.


	36. Running out of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is running out of time.

Blaise was a wreck for a good two weeks after his ritual. He had described the pain to Harry, explaining how the magic seemed to force its way into his skin. He was constantly complaining about his muscles aching, and spent hours on end soaking in a scalding hot bath. Theo seemed to realize what was going on, but left it be, knowing that Harry couldn't say anything about it and Blaise wouldn't. Draco, however, didn't have the sort of tact required of leaving things where they lie, and constantly demanded answers from him. Harry always changed the subject with ease, good as diversion tactics.

He spent many hours down in the library with Theo when Draco was off at quidditch practice, still trying to figure out what the golden liquid could be. He even experimented with the concoction and ended up perfecting the ratios, coming up with a potion that was more of a deep gold color than the first one. Harry didn't really know why he had decided that this was the correct coloring, he was going off instincts mostly. Regardless of how it looked though, he still couldn't make sense of any sort of effect it had on the rats, and was wondering if he should start trying it out on other (larger) animals.

Theo didn't really pay any attention to Harry’s mad scientist experiments, too focused on his own elemental magic. He had gotten to the point where he could shake the ground slightly, and occasionally rocks would fly into his hand with enough concentration. It wasn't enough for the boy though, and he became more and more agitated the less and less progress he made. It worried Harry quite a bit, and he had eventually forced his friend aside to figure out what was going on.

“Theo, mate, why are you being so hard on yourself about this?” They were sitting in some slightly moldy couches in the back of the library, Harry with his elbows on his knees and leaning over to Theo with a worried look.

“I don't know what youre talking about, I am simply frustrated that I seem incapable of doing simple magic-”

“-but it's not simple!” Harry cut him off, flabbergasted, “mate, no one has done magic like this since the founders era. You are, quite literally, teaching yourself an ancient art that was already incredibly rare at the time that it was well known. Elemental magic is the opposite of simple, and I'm honestly impressed you've gotten this far in such a small amount of time.”

Theo stared at him with wide eyes as he processed his words. Harry felt that the other boy might start crying, and backtracked a little.

“-and if you really want to talk about someone not being able to do a simple task, I’ve been trying to figure out how to aim a bow for two bloody months and im still more likely to shoot the arrow up my own arse then hit the target.”

Theo let out a wet laugh, definitely about to cry. Harry landed a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“You've been pushing yourself way too hard lately mate, you're worrying me and Draco. I would say you're worrying Blaise but we both know he's got his own mess to deal with right now.”

Theo laughed harder, rubbing his eyes as Harry laughed along with him.

“You're probably right.”

“Probably?”

“Don't push your luck, Potter.”

Another round of laughter erupted from the pair, and Theo’s mind settled, memories of cold green eyes becoming overtaken by his friend’s happy, mischievous ones. 

* * *

Draco could feel his skin tearing open slightly while he sat in astronomy that night.

He had slouched slightly, and a sharp stab of pain and the feeling of something shifting allerted him to things being very,  _ very _ wrong _.  _ He spent the rest of the class sitting as still as possible, trying not to shift further, panic slowly rising up from his stomach.

The past few months had been more uncomfortable than painful, as he couldn’t feel his wings growing underneath his flesh anymore. His wings development had the point where they were as big as they were going to get before his birthday, and instead he had to deal with the strange and itchy sensation of feathers starting to grow just under his skin. His entire back was practically one big purple bruise, and the two lumps had swelled to the point that his entire back except for the skin on his spine was raised off his muscle, making it obvious that his wings would soon be revealing themselves. He had started to notice the pattern of feathers pressing into his thin skin layer, making the wings even more obvious.

He worried very much about how his skin would fare, was there another layer growing along with his wings? Or would he just have to deal with exposed muscle on his back while his skin grew back? His father had said that it generally depended on your wingspan and size, which was above all extremely ominous and  _ very _ worrying.

He sped out of the astronomy tower with Harry at his heels, the taller boy seeming to know instinctively that something was wrong. Draco kept his posture rimrod straight, worried that if he hunched even slightly, his back would rip further. 

Harry opened the dorm door for him, and Theo came in with them. Blaise had skipped class again, and was currently passed out in his bed, snoring loudly.

“Harry, help me with my uniform, please.”

They watched silently as the tallest boy undid the buttons on Draco’s over shirt, sliding it off of his shoulders gently. Theo sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“What? What is it?”

“You’re bleeding.”

Harry scrambled around him to look at his back, and Draco could hear the boy mumble a quiet severing charm to cut his undershirt off of him with stunning accuracy and skill.

“What happened? Bloody say something!”

Harry was casting healing charms quietly, trying not to look at the rest of the boy’s back. Draco’s undershirt had been bloody all along the upper left side, and it had nearly given him a heart attack. Apparently, Draco seemed to have shifted wrong, and it looked as though his left wing had pressed upwards a bit too far, and had punctured the skin. What he could see of the wing, it was still growing some feathers, but was mostly formed, though he could only get a small glimpse of it before his healing charms did their job and patch up the wound, forcing the wing back into its proper place just under the flesh layer.

“It's fine now.”

“What. Happened.” Draco was panicking, straightening his back more than it already was.

Sighing slightly, half out of relief, half of worry. Harry went back around to Draco’s front, gently explaining what he thought happened and what he had done to fix the problem. The shorter boy became more and more pale as he continued to explain, face turning an ashen gray by the end of his explanation. Draco thanked him quietly before grabbing some silk bed-wear and hurrying off to the showers, ignoring Harry's worried calls to wait.

It was about ten minutes later that Draco found himself sitting in a cold bath, back straight as a ruler and eyes welling up with frustrated tears.

_ Heirs of great houses do not cry. _

It was a mantra that he had been using often throughout the year, trying to keep himself from curling up in a ball and trying not to exist.

_ Heirs of great houses do not cry, Draco, so stop it. _

It just wasn't  _ fair.  _ Why did he have to be saddled with this… this curse! He sniffled, splashing the cold water into his eyes as he bent at the neck, still incredibly paranoid about moving his spine in the slightest.

_ Heirs of great houses do not cry, even if they have a very good reason for it. _

Draco was so,  _ so  _ tired of the constant discomfort of bloody  _ wings  _ growing right under his skin. He was so exhausted by constantly having to hide the fact from everyone but his friends, knowing that if word got out it would ruin his entire family in a heartbeat. He was so  _ bloody tired  _ of all the pain and worry and merlin he just wanted it all to  _ stop. _

_ Heirs of great houses do not cry, unless it is extenuating circumstances, in which they can cry as much as they damn well please, as long as they're sitting starkers in a bathtub all alone. _

Deciding that his new mantra was much more reasonable in relation to his current situation, Draco shamelessly let himself cry, wishing desperately that he was normal.

* * *

**The Valkyrie were an all female group who chose those who may die in battle and those who may live. Picking half of those killed in battle, they took the chosen to the hall of the slain, also known as Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin. There, the deceased warriors became known as einherjar. When the einherjar were not preparing for** **_Ragnarök_ ** **(see page 89), the Valkyrie would bring them mead as they feasted in Valhalla. The Valkyrie are commonly described as warrior women, and by extension daughters of royalty. They were said to be accompanied by ravens, and were associated with swans or horses.**

He flipped to page 89.

**Ragnarök was foretold as a series of events, detailing in order: a great battle, the death of a number of great figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), natural disasters, and the entire world becoming flooded with water. After these events, the world will resurface anew and fertile, and the surviving gods will return and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Many have attributed the christian flooding of the earth and the tale of Noah's ark as proof of the widespread cultural belief in Ragnarök, though concrete proof of the event is nonexistent.**

Blaise shut the book with a sigh, putting it gently down on the tiled floor. It was a few weeks after Draco had had his newly dubbed 'wing incident' and Blaise was almost completely recovered from his first ritual. During his recovery time he had been forced by the rather nagging voice in his head to read up on more of the northern germanics and the gods that they followed. This had eventually brought him to the topic of Ragnarök, which sounded like a great big mess if he’d ever heard of one. The valkyrie were an interesting sounding bunch though, he always found the idea of strong women who could crush his skull with their bare hands appealing, and the einherjar was a really cool name if anything else.

Sighing again, he dipped lower into the scalding bath, his nose just barely above the water so he could breath. 

It was firmly into May, and Theo had put aside whatever he had been so aggressively working on to instead aggressively study for final exams. His other friends were much less inclined to study though, Harry being a literal genius who fucked around with potions instead, probably inventing something incredible like bottled immortality or something equally ridiculous. Draco had his creature inheritance to worry about, so he was also ignoring the looming exams. Blaise winced, the other boy's back was in an awful state, the skin was dying, and looked about ready to fall off. Harry had taken to wrapping it lightly in cooling bandages to keep everything in place.

Blaise was considering studying for the exams, really he was, but he hasn't really been paying attention to school the past four months or so, and didn't really have the notes to study with. He considered asking boy-genius to help him, but Harry didn't make any notes either, and probably didn't really have the time to deal with the aftermath of Blaise’s poor effort in school. Theo would shoo him away no doubt, and Draco was a good month away from literally having his back ripped open, Blaise doubted he had the mental capacity to deal with a mild inconvenience, much less exams.

Submitting himself to shite grades with a sigh, (and making a mental note to try a tad harder in his third year) Blaise leaned back and stared uncomprehendingly at the ceiling.

_ Do you regret your pledge? _

Groaning loudly, he sunk completely into the water. The voice spoke up and questioned him occasionally, as eventually he had started to reply.

_ Absolutely not. _

_ Are you ready for the next one? _

_ I am. _

Breathing air out of his nose, Blaise watched with blurry eyes as the bubbles floated to the surface of the water, contemplating. He was absolutely ready for the next pledge, but Merlin had the first one hurt. The light from several candles around the bathroom refracted through the water, appearing blurry and geometric to him. He closed his eyes, not realizing that he could breathe just fine under the crystalline water. A dark green snake lounged along the tub's rim, watching him carefully, making sure he was safe.

He didn't notice.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall was absolutely positive something was extremely wrong with Hermione Granger.

The girl had  _ punched _ one of the upper year gryffindors in the  _ face  _ for telling her that perfection was a very difficult thing to accomplish, and to relax a smidge with the studying. The girl in question had been sheparded off to the medical wing for some bruise paste while the younger one was dragged up to the headmasters office.

“Now Miss. Granger, you are aware that attacking someone for no reason other than they said something you don't like, is not a good way to go about things, yes?” Albus was trying to placiate and scold the girl at the same time, and Minerva felt that it was an ineffective approach if anything. The girl needed someone to tell her off and actually punish her in some way! Granger had done plenty of things that deserved  _ at least _ a detention and Albus wormed her out of all of them.

To say the transfiguration professor was not pleased would be an understatement, the headmaster consistently favored her house yes, but this was taking it too far.

“Yes Headmaster.” the girl appeared regretful in the very least, and somewhat cowed. Minerva was not convinced.

“Well, I hope that you understand how what you did was wrong.”

“I do, headmaster.”

Albus nodded, sitting back and stroking his beard as if it was his ego, “Well as long as-”

“Albus, you are not  _ truly _ considering letting her get away with hitting a student! She must be assigned detention in the very least.” Minerva cut him off, flabbergasted and completely done with his nonsense. He seemed to almost… glare at her, but it was so quick that she immediately wrote it off as something else. 

Albus nodded, and assigned a week of detention to the girl, who was rearing up to argue. Shaking her head, Minerva grabbed the muggleborn girl and practically dragged her from the room, scolding her all the while.

“Your detentions will be with me at six o’clock each night starting on Sunday Miss. Granger, I hope this is a lesson in restraint for you.”

With those parting words, she left the girl at the fat lady’s painting and made her way to her own office, intent on cracking open her new bottle of brandy and wasting away for the night.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore fumed in his office, angry at both the young girl and his transfiguration professor. Hermione Granger was almost always perfect, strong willed and determined to do whatever he asked, but her occasional bouts of strange behavior were  _ extremely  _ damning. His deputy wasn’t making things any easier for him either, wanting to punish the girl as if she was any other student.

At least Severus was smart enough to leave well enough alone. Regardless of the man’s troubling allegiances, he was certainly good at not caring about Albus’ going ons.

He sighed, regardless of his staff and their happenings, Harry Potter's second year was almost at a close, and he hadn’t made very many strides to pull the boy back to the light. His allegiance with ‘death’ was something that worried the hadmaster greatly, and he used that worry as a reason for not doing anything in regards to the boy. 

Popping a lemon drop into his mouth, trying to calm his nerves, Albus put the boy-who-lived out of his mind, focusing instead on Miss. Granger’s worrying actions, as well as the rest of the ever shorter school year.

* * *

**God of tricksters I call to thee,**

**of my mind I request your council.**

**God of snakes I gift my memories,**

**my allegiance lies at your feet.**

**God of knotts, creator of myschef,**

**accept my pledge of loyalty.**

Time had passed quickly, and Blaise’s second pledge had come and gone at the end of may. It was much less painful than the first, but felt intrusive-like someone was picking through his memories and thoughts, pausing occasionally and seemingly contemplating his past experiences. 

It still left him exhausted, feeling drained of his magic. He didn't pass out again though, which Blaise felt was a large improvement, all things considered.  Walking out of the Room of Requirement under Harry’s invisibility cloak, Blaise decided that he was going to try to study just a little for his exams, his mind clearer than it had ever been.

Two twin green snakes followed slowly behind him, swirling and knotting together as they went.

He didn't notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if you're confused by the timeline in this chapter, it's basically the month of May, and the main things that happened during it.  
> PS. The last chapter comes out tomorrow, and after that will be character references for year three!


	37. We are out of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The school year has ended, and time is up.

**Veela-Salvic**

**Veela are commonly described as semi-human magical beings native to Bulgaria, or more precisely the Salvic highlands. Appearing as beautiful women with white-gold hair and pale skin, they have a natural affinity to charm other beings. When angered however, they transform into Harpy-like creatures (see page 744), and have the ability to throw balls of flame from their hands. Veela are well known as the magical creature to most often wed wizards, and due to this it is not uncommon for many old wizarding families to inhibit traits of traditionally veela heritage, though if these traits are in fact credited to an official creature inheritance is unknown.**

He let out a tired breath, turning the page.

**Vetala-India**

**The Vetala are a subspecies of vampire that are native to India, said to live around charnel grounds. The main difference between a common vampire and a Vetala being that the vetala is more in tune with the spirit world, living with a foot in the living world and one in the spirit one. The religion of hinduism credits the Vetala to being an evil spirit instead of a vampire, and one that has the ability to possess freshly made corpses. There is a strong vetala cult in the konkan region of india, considering the species sacred.** **Being unaffected by the laws of space and time, they have an uncanny knowledge about the past, present, and future and a deep insight into human nature. Therefore many wix seek to capture them and turn them into slaves.**

Harry slammed the book shut with frustration, rubbing his exhausted eyes tiredly. It had to be at least three in the morning, and instead of sleeping, he was trying to finish the Ve- section of his book. Shoving the book to the side, he got up and moved silently to a bookshelf, currently in the library. 

He had been looking for things about potter's fields for a while, but hadn't found anything till he thought to write his aunt about them. She had written back that they were graveyards for unknown or unclaimed people, and then asked why the hell he was looking them up. He had written back something about a herbology assignment and went on to research what being buried as an unknown person could do to a spirit. What he found had been incredibly depressing: the soul was unable to fully pass on, and because of that were often left as ghosts.

This is what happened to many of the ghosts at Hogwarts, though people who were murdered also had the chance of becoming ghosts. Nearly-headless Nick, Moaning Myrtle, and the gray lady were proof of that. Most ghosts clung to the living world, their final wishes to stay alive or be remembered ingrained in them. Which explained why they seemed to avoid him so much, he had observed since his first day at Hogwarts that the ghosts fled from him immediately after spotting him.

_ “Oh shut up Wesley, you'll be lucky if even Hufflepuff accepted you.” _

_ “Sod off, Malfoy! You're one to talk, being a shoe-in for Slytherin.” _

_ Harry stood passively while the two argued, wondering if this moment was indicative of the rest of his life. The light and dark fighting over him in a constant, neverending tug-of-war. _

_ Stop being so dramatic. _

_ At some point a few ghosts breezed through a wall, right on time. What was different from the first go round however, is they took one look at him and hightailed it out of there. _

_ Weird. _

Since that day, the ghosts had immediately fled the room whenever he appeared, but he never paid much attention to them-not really caring one way or the other. Now though, he understood why they were so afraid of him. He  _ stank  _ of death, he was Death's master after all, and that fact was picked up on by the ghosts. Perhaps they thought he would force them to pass on or something?

Looking through the books, he pulled an old, gray tome off the shelf. It was the book that had first detailed the power-boosting ritual that involved a potter's field, and he figured that he might as well read over the ritual again, still not positive that he would do it. To his frustration however, the ritual seemed to require an awful lot of things that either took ages to owl order, or were extremely illegal. He would need six months of prep work in the least, time that he simply didn’t have.

Rubbing his cheek thoughtfully, Harry tried to pick apart the next two weeks to shove even more things into the mess. The Farleys had decided to wait for their daughter to get out of school before officalizing the alliance, wanting Gemma to be able to ride the initial attention wave to a good paying job in the ministry. His golden potion was still a mystery, and he had put it on the backburner for now, the other poison that had come of the experimentation working just fine for what he needed it for. He still had shite aim with a bow, but he was steadily getting better, so that was something he might be able to continue doing through his third year. There was still no discernable way to get into the girls dorms yet, and he also put that aside till the opportunity presented itself.

Harry really wished he had more than two weeks left of the school year, but final exams were the next monday, and he had nothing that he could do in that amount of time. If he had a month of school left he might be able to make more progress on his poisons and the strange golden potion, but no dice.

_ I'm out of time. _

* * *

Thasin slithered out of the forest, heading straight for the looming castle in the distance. The strange hoof men seemed insistent on finding her, so she decided to return to Harry that night. Weaving through familiar halls, she silently slithered into a small divot in the wall, coming upon the large common room that Harry and his friends spent many hours in. It was a simple case of going up the stairs and into the correct room before she was winding her way into a familiar bed, the bird boy being startled awake by her being there.

He was laying on his stomach, and the bird smell was much stronger than before. She noticed this all distantly, settling near his head, she curled into a loose knot and fell asleep.

* * *

Blaise nearly skipped the exams altogether, and if Theo hadn’t dragged him out of his desk chair every morning he likely would have. Regardless of that though, he had managed to panic study just enough that he was sure he had passed at least charms and astronomy, but he most certainly failed in herbology, and most of the practicals were rather pitiful across the board.

The leaving feast found him reading his green book as he distantly shoveled food in his mouth, barely registering that gryffindor had won the house cup. He was just refreshing himself on the final ritual, even though he had practically memorized the entire book (it was out of habit at this point). Looking up, he realized how glum his friends appeared, Draco wasn't even boasting about the slytherin house’s conquering of the quidditch cup, too busy turning his spine into a ruler. Harry also appeared subdued, his abnormally long fingers tapping the wooden table, nervously fidgeting. The taller boy had seemed off for the past few weeks, and Blaise wondered if he was hiding something. Theo was rubbing his temples occasionally, apparently having another bad headache. Blaise frowned, was Theo getting enough water? He had read somewhere that dehydration could cause a headache, loss of sleep as well.

“Another year has come and gone. Now I'm afraid to say that the rather publicized scandal of Professor Lockhart's books had spawned an inquest into the validity of his claims, and the ministry has calmly escorted him out of the school for questioning.”

Harry smirked a little, making a ‘gimme’ motion at Draco, who grumbled a bit before passing him a rather fat pouch of what Blaise could only assume to be 1,000 galleons.

He smiled a little, glad to see that some things weren’t weighed down by the depressing atmosphere.

“Other than that though, all is well, and I welcome you to eat to your heart's content!”

_ Finally. _

Shoveling food onto his plate greedly, he contemplated his friend's strange behavior. Sure, Draco had a right to be nervous, his first change would be coming very quickly after all. Theo also had a bit of an out, being generally kind of moody-headaches were also a commonplace it seemed, so that also didn't bother him-but Harry really didn't have anything going on that Blaise coud attribute to his fidgeting, maybe he was going to ask Draco out of something?

Blaise shook his head and sighed, putting his friends strange behavior out of his mind and focusing his full attention onto the food.

* * *

Theo felt like his head was going to explode.

His headaches were getting worse and worse, and with that pain was the knowledge that his inner eye was going to be opening soon. He wasn't scared so much that he just wanted it over and done with, maybe after it was finally fully opened his grandfather would stop trying to ‘cure’ him.

Theo knew that his inner eye opening was supposedly quite painful, but he honestly felt that he had already experienced pain in spades, and wasn't all that nervous about that either.

**Cold green eyes stared at him from the darkness.**

What he was worried about though, was his friends.

Draco was going to be going through his first major shift in his creature inheritance, but at least he would have his father there to help. Who did Harry have, his muggle relatives? Theo sighed, they sounded like pleasant people from the way that the other boy talked about them, but he had no doubt that Harry was keeping his inheritance from them. Just like how he was keeping it from Blaise for some weird reason. Theo didn't know why that irked him so much, but it did. He had figured it out ages ago, and Harry had obviously told Draco, considering the looks of understanding they shot each other whenever Draco’s back hurt or one of them found Harry staring blankly into a mirror in the dead of night. Blaise was their friend, and had taken the secrecy vow with them, he would keep the secret.

However… Theo’s eyes narrowed. Blaise was keeping his pledge a secret from Draco and him as well, and likely wouldn't have told Harry if the boy hadn't forced it out of him, so perhaps he deserved it for keeping his own goings on to himself.

Theo didn't like it, but the secrecy wouldn’t last the summer, so he supposed that letting them go on with it was the easiest option.

* * *

It was a quiet walk down to the Hogwarts Express, Harry was contemplating everything that would happen over the summer with extreme worry. His main concern was being able to get out of the house for his birthday, so he could keep his family safe from himself. He could only hope that Death could help him with that, the god seemed willing enough to help him through this process after all.

His second worry was Draco, he had no way to help the blond from his residence in Surrey, and he wouldn't be able to leave till he recovered enough to manage going out. He also worried about Theo, as the boy had confided in him that his inner eye would surely awake that summer.

_ We’re out of time. _

_ I'm here for you Harry, everything will happen, but I will be there with you. _

That was another thing that worried him greatly. Tom was in his mindscape, and he had no idea what the monster might do to him once the protections came down.

_ Just… just promise me you'll lock the door between us on my birthday. Please. _

Tom didn't reply.

* * *

After all the students left, Albus Dumbledore had a moment of clarity, quickly panicking.

He had left Harry Potter alone the entire school year! For some reason, he had truly thought that leaving the boy would be a better tactic than simply forcing his way into the blasted child's mind and figuring out just  _ why  _ he was loyal to death.

Rubbing his face with a frustrated groan, Albus quickly pulled out a piece of parchment, ideas swirling around in his head. The boy would be far from his influence at this point, but he was still a mistreated orphan, if anyone could bring him back under Albus’ wing, it would be a friend of the boy's deceased father. Convincing the board to let a werewolf onto the staff would have originally been quite tricky, near impossible you could say, but Albus was not one for consulting the board.

What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

* * *

The train compartment was tense, and Draco was starting to fidget besides him. Harry had been considering giving Draco the necklace for his birthday, but didn’t think that it would be as well received on the day. He had been mustering up the courage to break the uncomfortable silence when Draco did it for him.

“I'm scared.”

The admission made everyone turn to the blond with worry, who was sitting on his seat, spine ramrod straight. Harry reached out and rubbed the shorter boy's shoulder comfortingly, and the atmosphere turned from tense to depressing in a millisecond.

“It's not so much that I'm scared of wings bursting out of my back or some shite so much that I'm terrified that it'll be… it'll be official then you know?”

Blaise’s eyes widened, finally seeming to realize the reality of Draco’s (and Harry’s) situation, Theo nodded with understanding.

“I'll always be in your corner, Draco.” 

Harry’s admission made the blond laugh a bit, and they all seemed to settle, the others quickly agreeing with Harry.

“Yeah! You won't get rid of us just because you eat worms or something mate.”

“Blaise, Veela are carnivorous…”

“Worms are animals!”

_ “What?” _

Theo and Blaise proceeded to have an extremely amusing argument about the difference between insects and animals. Wherein Blaise insisted that they were basically the same thing, and Theo nearly strangled him for it.

“Oh, Draco, I've got you an early birthday present.” Harry handed him the box that Death had given him the necklace in, and watched with excitement as Draco opened it and pulled out the necklace.

_ For fucks sakes leech would you  _ **_please_ ** _ just protect yourself for a change. _

Harry ignored him. “Its embedded with a special type of-uh-defensive magic I came up with.'' He realized belatedly that he hadn’t come up with a believable lie beforehand, and had to make one up on the fly. Draco nodded along, as did the other two, apparently having decided a twelve year old inventing new magic was totally acceptable if said twelve year old was Harry Potter.

“How does it work?” Draco questioned, fastening it around his neck. 

Harry, suddenly feeling a tad mischievous, turned to Blaise. “Hey mate, shoot a jinx of your choice at ‘im.”

The blond jerked his head up with wide eyes, a yell on his lips as Blaise immediately shot off a bat bogey hex, grin ferial.

His eyes widened comically as the hex bounced back, throwing him backwards. He covered his nose with his hand and muffled a curse. Harry quickly muttered the counter curse, trying not to laugh along with Theo, who was nearly on the floor.

“Bloody hell-” Draco was having a heart attack, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Theo seemed to realize just what had happened, and the nerdy boy descended onto Harry and demanded to be told how he managed to create an  _ object  _ that repelled  _ spells.  _ Harry furiously refused to say anything, laughing all the while.

The rest of the train ride was of a lighter mood than it had started, but still quite subdued, Draco’s admission still fresh on everyone's mind.

* * *

Stepping off the train, Harry waved goodbye to his friends, watching worriedly as Blaise stormed past his angry mother. The woman immediately started yelling in italian, and Harry hoped the boy would be able to do his pledge on time. Draco was quickly swept from the platform by his parents, his birthday was in two weeks after all. As much as he was loath to admit it, Lucius Malfoy seemed to be a good father at heart. He pat Theo on the back as the boy slunk away towards an imposing man, already looking particularly miserable about going home.

Harry sighed, looking with trepidation at the border between the magical and muggle world. He was officially out of time. It was officially summer vacation the  _ second _ he walked through that barrier, and with it was the knowledge that soon, everything would change. He slowly started walking towards it, his footfalls seeming to echo in his head as the heartbeat’s steady tempo started up, the chanting seemed far off. He was still protected by the golden wall, but his monster was scratching at it, testing the flimsy barrier as it slowly started to give way.

Just barely a month left for him.

He was out of time.

They were all out of time.

Harry crossed through the barrier and into the muggle world.

**End of Year Two.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character references will be up tomorrow!  
> PS. I wrote this entire chapter while listening to Ceelo Green's "Fuck you" on repeat as a way to motivate myself, I feel like that fact should be touched on in some regard.


	38. Third Year Character Refrences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third year character references (with bonus girls)

Did I suddenly decide to make Theo hot? No, that twas his fate all along.

Bonus:

Someone had asked about the girls uniform, so I thought it might be nice to draw the main three girls in the typical uniform. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow is the first chapter of third year! Here we goooooo


	39. The Summer has Ended and we are not Saved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A inhuman screech echos through the woods, and the earth shudders in anticipation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains very detailed gore, body horror, and undertones of child grooming

**Year Three:** **Ragnarök Unleashed**

Draco’s birthday came far too quick, and before he even had time to prepare, he was sitting at the dinner table for his birthday dinner. It was dead quiet, his mother simply siped her wine, and his father stared blankly off into the distance. Draco felt as though he might vomit any second.

The entire ordeal played out as if it was his final meal.

His parents quietly walked him to a section of the manor that he had never been in, deep into the dungeons of the estate. The room he would be staying the night in was far below ground, far away from prying eyes. His father said that he would be staying in there for the night so he wouldn't accidentally hurt someone, but they both knew it was so no one saw. 

Draco’s shoulders shook as his mother kissed his forehead softly, carding her fingers through his hair gently.

“Be brave, little dragon.” Was all she said, his father gave him instruction on how to remove his golden cuffs, and then they were gone.

Closing the dark door behind him with a quiet click, he registered with growing dread how it automatically locked from the outside. A few candles lit from far above him, and he looked around the room that his father and grandfather and ancestors of old had all stayed a night in.

It wasn't a nice room, the walls and floor were beat up, long claw marks running up and down the walls and floor and some were even high up on the tall sloping ceiling. Straightening his back further, he strode to the middle of the room-there was no furniture or windows- and carefully removed his shirt, feeling the fabric scratch unpleasantly against his outer layer of skin.

His father had told him many times exactly what he had to do, and why he had to do it. These things were much easier said than done, and as Draco sat down on the cold stone floor, his nervous shaking became more pronounced.

He carefully removed the golden cuffs, nearly doubling over as every nerve in his back started registering the pain. Draco had to sit cross legged on the floor for several minutes before he could build up a tolerance to it, and had to sit even longer to build up his nerve.

In most cases the first transformation is forced into happening by a person's inner creature, but Draco's family had gotten into the habit of forcing it themselves, a few hours earlier than planned so that they could keep their mind during the first half of the transformation at the very least. This worried him-mostly because the idea of using muscles for the first time to rip his back open felt akin to skinning himself with a dull knife.

The few candles in the room let off eerie light and he breathed out slowly, feeling for the unused muscles and attempted to flex his wings.

He hesitated for a moment, but managed to move them a marginal amount, which immediately caused him to hiss in pain as his wings shifted upwards and tore through his flesh slightly, much the same as they had in astronomy a couple months prior.

Something deep inside the boy's mind peaked open sharp, silver eyes.

Shaky breathing echoed through the room as Draco grit his teeth, trying to move his wings further as they slowly tore father through his skin. He could feel the outer layer pull off of the muscle, and hissed out as parts of his back that weren’t housing his wings also pulled upwards, the skin tearing painfully off of the muscle as his nerves screamed at him to _stop._

An exhaled gasp, his quickly sharpening nails dug into his knees, drawing even more blood. Tears sprung from his eyes as he relaxed the wings slightly and felt the scraping of feathers downwards against muscle as they slid painfully back into place.

_Oh merlin I can't do this, I can't._

A quiet, questioning scree echoed through his skull.

 _Now?_ It seemed to whisper.

_I can't do this I can't._

He straightened his spine, tears falling faster as something inside him got up, prowling forward from the dark recesses and into the light.

_Now? We fly now?_

His head twitched to the side against his best wishes, like his muscles were reacting to an electric shock.

_Now, Now! Fly right now!_

A cry that was more birdlike than human bubbled up through his lips, and his wings shoved _hard_ against his skin. He was panicking, something was surging up to take control of his movements, forcing the not yet used wings to tear further through the bonds that held them flimsy in place. His spine bent, flesh on his lower back tearing slowly from the muscle. 

He screamed.

The skin of his lower arms was thickening as the dying flesh of his back thinned and ripped. Nails sharpening into talons as his hands turned leathery, feet and toes lengthening into long talons that embedded into the floor and scratched slow, deep incisions into the stone as his legs stretched out as all his limbs extended and convulsed.

One final, painful shove tore off most of the skin and long, bloodied wings burst out of his back- the area almost completely skinned, the bloodied muscle exposed to air for the first time.

His pained screaming changed pitch, fire dancing up his arms as his human mind sank into oblivion.

A veela’s screeching could be heard all through the night, monstrous and enraged. It was prowling around the room, scratching at the walls and wanting to get out-wanting to _fly._

Draco was gone, sunk deep into sleep as his veela raged on through the night.

* * *

Shadows danced through a darkened room, twisting unnaturally into shapes and faces, sometimes a menacing cackle could be heard, manic grin widening as the chaotic magic grew thicker in anticipation. 

_Soon._

A young man sat in the middle of a large circle, intricate runic arrays spiraling in complicated patterns that were drawn out expertly with chalk. The teen was drawing bloody runes of ‘soul’ and ‘magic’ all along his body, the symbols twisting up and down his body like red, bloodied snakes, knotting and twisting in complicated arrays. Cursing softly as he ran out of blood, the teen grabbed at something and held it up. Twin snakes curled up in a corner of the room, watching the proceedings with careful eyes and occasionally tasting the magic in the air.

The teen winced, dragging a ritual dagger across his arm to draw more blood, the red liquid dripping sluggishly into a wooden bowl.

_I have to hurry…_

The boy's mother was out of the house, having gone on a date with some man or another and left the boy to his own devices. She had been keeping careful eyes on him the whole summer break, watching him for any suspicious activity. She didn't know that he had finished two of his three pledges, and by the time she returned, it would be too late to interfere with the third.

He drew the last rune down on his dark skin, and placed the dagger and bowl out of the circle, careful not to drip any blood onto the chalk-drawn runes, not wanting to mess anything up. Settling back down in the middle of the rune circle, Blaise quieted his mind, focusing on the constant buzz of his gods magic underneath his skin and twisted through his mind and flowing through the air. Taking a deep breath, he reached out for the familiar magic, and was met halfway. 

He began to chant.

**My god of chaos,**

**I have gifted my body.**

**My god of mischief,**

**I have given my mind.**

**My loyalty lies at your feet,**

**I open my soul.**

The old norse slipping from his tongue, the quiet chant started out a whisper, but quickly built as the overwhelming magic thickened. Twin snakes hissed happily and slithered quickly to the circle, tangling up his body and over his shoulders, hiding reassuringly in his ears.

_Bow to me, child of chaos._

His head lowered, but he continued the chant, breathing heavy as the snakes tightened their hold around him, pressing tighter to his diaphragm.

_Submit to me, do as I say._

The magic was physical now, sickly green swirling around the room, lashing against the walls and weighing thick in the air and shoveling down his lungs, making it harder still to breath.

_You will torture if I ask._

Pounding on the door went unnoticed, a woman’s begging pleas to stop being drowned out by the roaring magic.

_You will kill if I order it._

Twin snakes knotted around him, entwined together and glowing with the magic still thick in the air. Hissing happily at him, his mother's screams were completely drowned out.

 _You are_ **_mine._ **

All the magic surged, crushing into him and forcing him into a deep bow, forehead slammed into the floor. The twin snakes pressed into his skin, streaming down to the back of his hand and seeping into the skin, branding him. The climatic finish to months of work bearing down on him and overwhelming his still developing core.

The magic started to settle, and he could finally hear the pounding on the door and his mothers screams. Someone elses cold hands covered his ears, blocking out her cries once more. A deep chuckle rattled through his skull.

The pledge was complete.

The door unlocked, and his mother stumbled inside with a sob.

* * *

It was a warm night almost a week before his birthday when Harry cracked it.

He was up late, researching long into the night as he cursed Death to hell and back. He had taken to flipping haphazardly through the remainder of his book, reading the names but skimming the rest with thinly veiled panic. 

_Warg? No that sounds stupid. Wa-Won-dee-a-megw…? Is that really a real thing?_

He brushed past several pages with frustration, hands landing firmly on an entry for a ‘Wekufe’. It seemed to be some sort of demon, but he felt no connection. The panic bred frustration and he leaned back into his chair and rubbed both hands across his face in a mix of exhaustion and creeping dread. He could feel his monster clawing at the barrier, the chanting slowly growing louder and louder as he focused onto it.

_Wait…_

The chanting. 

It had to be important, it _had_ to be. Bolting up, and listening hard, he could feel it echoing quietly through his head. Hard drums and loud war cries. It was menacing and boisterous, but celebratory, meant to be danced to. It felt powerful, like it was driving a foe away. The beat and singing almost reminded him of…

His eyes widened marginally, it was an American tribal chant, it had to be. 

“Idiot, you idiot that was so _obvious.”_

Grabbing his book with new found determination, he flipped to the index and searched for all the creatures native to colder regions of the Americas, excitement racing through him as a potential lead presented himself.

_Canada perhaps?_

Most of the creatures were ones that he had already read over and crossed out, and he was about to try something different before he neared the end of the list and stopped, the chanting doubling in volume and energy.

_Wendigo._

His blood turned to ice as he fumbled the book in his hurry to flip to the correct page, realizing that he had already been _so close_ to figuring it out. Panic gripped him again, the chanting was growing louder.

_Not good. Not good. Not good!_

Reading the entry with wide eyes, he could almost _feel_ the demon grin with satisfaction.

**Wendigo- Algonquin region, Canada**

**The wendigo is a demonic creature known most notoriously by the Algonquin peoples of Canada. While the true origins of the creature are unknown, it is most commonly considered a human who had been infected by black magic after turning to cannibalism. One of the most ruthless predators known to the American continent, the Wendigo is known for its distinctive ability to mimic people's voices to lure its victims closer, as well as control over winter storms. So little is known about the wendigo due to the fact that no one has managed to capture one for research or, by extension, survive a close encounter. Due to this, the exact traits of a Wendigo are mostly unknown, though all first hand accounts agree that they are extremely large and emaciated, and have a distinctive glow to their eyes that comes from deep within the skull. Precautions against the creature are currently to avoid if at all possible and do** **not** **engage.**

_Ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump_

He could feel the burn growing hotter behind his eyes, long claws scratched harder and harder at the golden dome. So _so_ close to breaking through. Eager to burst in. It was coming for him, thirteenth birthday be damned. His breathing picked up, it was going to break in, right now. He wasn't ready, he needed _time._

_Harry, Harry it's ok, it isn't going to break through._

He was out of time. It was _coming._

The heartbeat was beating a mantra in his ears, panic turning to abject horror as his long- _too long they’re far too long-_ fingers clenched the wooden desk, nails indenting into the wood. He hunched down, eyes wide and terrified, the onset of a full blown panic attack taking the air from his lungs.

_I need to-_

He turned, instincts screaming to get out and do it _fast,_ the protections were collapsing and he was running out of _time._

He ran straight into someone, who held fast to him and refused to let go.

“Harry, calm down.”

It was so close, clawing at the barrier. He was watching it claw viciously at the golden protections, half in his head and half in the outside world, the massive figure was bearing down on him and-

_Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump_

He was going to die, it was going to kill him. 

Harry lashed out at the person holding him, panic gripping at his logic and silencing it. They held firm, brushing a hand through his hair gently.

“Harry, Harry if you don't calm down I'll need to take you away from here, you're feeding into it, _you're letting this happen.”_

_Stop, stop!_

He couldn't hear Death, he couldn't hear Tom. His entire focus on the chanting and the heartbeat and those sharp _sharp_ claws and oh merlin he was about to _die._

“Riddle, I know you can hear me, lock the door. This is happening _right now.”_

The barrier cracked.

There was a moment of complete and utter silence in which Harry and his demon just stood there, eyes locked together in his mindscape as the thin golden dome cracked and splintered, raining down to the dirt like stardust raining from the sky. 

“Harry, I’m so _so_ sorry.”

It burst forward, ear piercing screech ringing his ears as it barreled down on him, claws slashing him to ribbons, sharp, yellowed teeth ripping into him and gnawing on him, tearing at his sanity and forcing him _down,_ deep into the dark corners of the forbidden forest, deep into his subconscious. 

It tore his Hogwarts to shreds, the chanting and drums and awful, horrible screeching seeping into him until the demon reached his core, where it sunk its twisted magic _deep_ into his and infected every crevice, twisted every atom, changed him in a way he couldn't comprehend. Mind and soul torn asunder his body twisted, changing into something _different._ Antlers ripping viciously through his skull, bones reforming and shifting and elongating. Veins bursting as joints popped out of their sockets, only to be twisted and put back _wrong._

This was greed, gluttony, and anger. His deepest, most twisted desires forcing their way up and taking control.

Harry was floating, inky blackness carrying him along-cradling him. The wendigo was in control now, forcing them to meld together and form something new. Something twisted, something _cruel._

A monster felt the cutting wind on its face in the middle of the woods, having been ripped through space and thrown roughly into a dense, snowy, pine forest by an irate god.

The screeching howl of several different voices layered together could be heard for miles.

Harry was gone, inner demons turned outwards to run rampant through abandoned woods.

* * *

_His eyes were burning, his back was splitting open, snakes were coiling up his arms and knotting around his soul, he could feel his skull trying to split in half._

Theo woke up screaming in a voice that was not his own. The sound ripping from his vocal cords and tearing apart his lungs.

**“A boy who mastered death lives a second life.”**

Green eyes, antlers-no, horns? Monster. Evil-badbadBAD.

**“The son of darkness will snuff out the candle of deceit.”**

He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes and sobbed, his skull was _shattering._

**“The demon will force the world into a new age.”**

A door slammed open, hands grasping, panicked yelling-his grandfather?

**“Death’s magic is forever shades of gray.”**

Spots appeared in his vision, the prophecy ripping through his inner eye and forcing it open, searing his lungs as the words of the gods were screamed from his throat like fire-like poison. He was sobbing into his grandfather's chest, the older man whispering gently in his ear.

“It will be alright Theodore it's all right. Everything's alright.”

_Everything’s wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. It's all gone to hell._

He cried harder, throat and lungs burning from the overexertion. His voice was hoarse and he was shaking uncontrollably, grasping desperately at his grandfather's night gown for comfort.

Cold eyes, cold green eyes. Happy _-gleeful_ cold green eyes.

_“Take hold of this pain, little prophet, it will guide you to greatness.”_

He didn't want greatness, and he didn't want the pain.

Theo curled farther into his grandfather, shaking horribly still and crying. 

_No more, please no more. We don't deserve this._

Somehow, he just knew that his friends were suffering too-in different ways, yes-but suffering all the same. His throat burned, scratched and bleeding from the fiery words of angry gods. He hacked up some blood, coughing uncontrollably as he sobbed and shook.

_We don't deserve this._

Cold, green eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been so excited for third year, so I've decided to keep to a once a day schedule, so I'll have more time to really get it the way I want it.


	40. Creating Monsters of Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftershocks of his birthday are starting to subside as recovery continues for Draco, though Harry has just woken up.  
> Not all prisons are full of cells, and the shackles can sometimes appear to you as harmless snakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has scenes involving child grooming, detailed descriptions of starvation and its effects, and mentions of past gore.

Harry had been missing from Surrey for a week.

His family of course, would have been in a right state of worry had they known this, but the Dursleys had been obliviated by someone into thinking that their nephew was staying at a friend’s house, and was perfectly fine. A man with golden-green eyes who had done the deed sighed quietly, returning to the snowy mountains of Canada to watch over his master.

The boy slept for a week, a monster prowling through the thick pine in his place. 

“Things could have been different ya know, if you hadn't decided to force this all onto him.”

Cold green eyes glanced towards the god, testingly.

“And let the greatest hunter on the planet squander itself? Let the boy be less powerful than his full potential? I did him a favor, sugarplum.”

That was certainly the question. Forcing Harry and the wendigo apart allowed for the demon to grow stronger and more savage in the boy's mind, which would certainly help Harry in the future, but right now the acclimation period will be much harder… much longer. Death wasn't certain it was really worth it, as the boy's human mind would be in a constant tug-of-war with the demon, which would distract him from more important things. He didn't always agree with Fate, and sometimes argued against her decisions, but forcing things off of the path she chose was unwise, so he kept his personal displeasure to himself.

Harry woke slowly as the demon grew tired, bones cracking back into place, shifting and popping. Long antlers snapping off as if shed; bloody, gaping holes going down to the bone taking their place. The wendigo crept back into the forbidden forest as Harry collapsed tiredly into the snow, limbs still stretched out long and unnatural, much longer than they were before.

_Harry?_

He blinked blearily, trying to figure out where he was and why he was in so much pain. Snow fell gently onto his face as he opened his tired eyes fully.

_What happened?_

_Everything's fine now, it's all going to be ok._

He felt extremely _not_ ok, his entire body was sore, and he felt like all his bones had been broken and put back together not quite right. Not only that, but Tom’s reply told him nothing of what happened, so it was likely pretty god awful. Harry buried his face in the snow, the biting cold soothing his aching… everything.

_Where am I?_

_Canada, I'm quite sure. Death brought you here a week ago._

_...a week?_

He had been out for that long? His thirteenth birthday must be just around the corner.

“Death.” It was a whisper into the wind, but was heard nonetheless. Leaving his chosen love with a nod, the god sought out his master. The crunching of boots on snow and cigarette smoke allerted Harry to his appearance.

“How do you feel?” a groan was the only answer, “better than I expected then, if you can still make noise.”

A large hand landed on his back, rubbing the bare skin comfortingly. Bird song was the only thing that could be heard for a time as Harry struggled to stay awake. He had slipped off into unconsciousness for who knows how long, and when he woke he was fully clothed and clean of dirt and grime, the worried eyes of Death staring down at him.

“I'm going to take you back home now, okay?”

“Okay.”

* * *

Draco had been laid up in bed for over a month, recovering and regrowing the flesh on his back. His wings were the same color as his hair once his mother had cleaned all the blood off of them, and he wasn't really sure if he liked them or not. His father explained that with enough control he could fold them back into his back and have them disappear-much like a veela did. Sadly, that ability would take time to master, and for now he would have to wait for his back to heal completely before he could even try. 

Draco sighed, shifting on his stomach slightly and stretching out, wincing as his wings stretched as well. He had no idea how he was going to hide them at Hogwarts, but he trusted his father and his ancestors, they must have had some sort of way to do so.

Making a pained face, he shuffled up on the bed and sat with his legs hanging off of it, spine slouched slightly as his freshly grown skin stretched. He wasn't completely healed yet, but his back muscles weren’t fully exposed anymore, and his mother promised a full recovery before August, which he considered a small mercy.

The creature inside of him was fully awake now though, and often whispered how it wanted to fly off into the mountains in his head. His father had explained months ago how he was similar but different to a true veela; going deeply into the analysis of a magical creature's psyche and how merging a wix and a creature together affected the offspring. 

“While your typical Veela is in tune with her more animalistic side, and switches between beautiful and horrific as easily as one would their emotions; _we_ are different, as our veela instincts are separate from our human brain-they don't fully mesh together. This is actually quite common with anyone with a creature inheritance, and is why we are considered abominations, because we truly can not fit perfectly in either world.”

This was fascinating from a psychological and magical point of view, but had also made Draco fall into a mild depression. Not only was he not fully human, but everyone thought he was an abomination on both sides. If anyone found out, the only people he would have would be his friends and family. He spent almost all his recovery time in bed, constantly exhausted and without motivation to bother with anything.

Settling at his desk, awkwardly shuffling his wings in an effort to sit comfortably with them. Draco picked up a quill and penned out a quick note to Harry, feeling guilty that he hadn't gotten the other boy anything for his birthday.

**Harry,**

**I know it's your thirteenth birthday tomorrow, and I feel awfully horrible for not getting you a birthday present. So… IOU? I read all of your letters and don't worry, I'm fine, just tired. My back is healing fast too, so really everything's fine, Are you alright though? You haven't written in about a week, and it's rather worrying. Are you looking for a good place to shift tomorrow? I'm sure my father would be happy to let you use our dungeons if you’d like.**

**-Draco**

**Ps. are you going to tell me what you are now? It's rather impolite to be keeping it secret from your fellow abomination.**

* * *

Harry’s aunt had been in a state when she saw him show up at the door that day, mostly due to the shock of seeing him seemingly grow four inches in a week-which was a good reason to be shocked out of her wits, in Petunias defense.

“What on earth happened?” she fret, patting him down and brushing at invisible dirt on his shoulders, leading him up the stairs slowly as he grunted in pain.

“My friend said that magic gets dodgy with puberty, I just had a growth spurt.” It was an awfully bad lie, but he didn't really feel like coming up with anything else. Death had hurriedly told him where they believed he had gone off to, and then fucked right off to wherever he lived, rather unhelpfully if Harry was being perfectly honest. Harry had still been trying to keep balance on his new legs-which were still in a great deal of pain-when his aunt had opened the door to see him standing (read crouching) there on the porch.

“Good lord… we’ll have to go clothes shopping tomorrow to get you a whole new wardrobe love.” He was extremely unenthusiastic about that idea, as standing in itself was a struggle, let alone going out and buying clothes of all things. She had a point though, as most of his pants would probably go up to his mid calf now, and he begrudgingly agreed as he was herded up the stairs and into the bathroom for a bath. He stayed in the scalding water for hours, enjoying the heat for once as it seemed to make the wendigo sluggish and the chanting go quiet. He managed eventually to stumble into his room, the soreness still not quite gone and him still not quite used to his longer limbs. He let out an exhausted groan when he noticed Persephone perched on his bed, really not wanting to deal with the difficult bird at the moment. Seeming to understand his blight, she simply dropped a letter onto the bed and flew back out the window, cuffing Hades with her wing on her way out.

Reading Draco’s rather short letter, Harry fell onto his bed and curled up under three different blankets with a sigh, attempting to disappear into the heavy quilts and puffy comforter. He didn't know what to write in response to the blonde, it was good that his back was healing, but that bit about the dungeons did _not_ sit well for Harry. Regardless, he felt conflicted about telling any of his friends about the wendigo, the creature was infamously horrible for a very good reason. Being a beautiful veela like Draco was one thing, and a creature inheritance like his could actually be sympathized with. Wendigos, on the other hand, didn't have a single redeeming attribute.

_They would be disgusted by me._

_Don't think like that, Leech._

He felt disgusted with himself honestly, wendigos were greed and gluttony incarnate, it was shameful for him to be so similar to the creature that the gods found it fitting for him to become one.

Burrowing further into his blankets, Harry curled up and tried to sleep, exhausted and restless.

* * *

His mother would never forgive him, probably.

Blaise had been locked in his room against his will, as his mother had grounded him for the rest of the summer and was currently deciding whether or not to keep him locked up for the rest of his life. He could hear her screaming at his great great grandfather through a floo call a few rooms away, going on about how he ‘wasn't ready’ and how ‘loki will corrupt him’. It was infuriating.

Grabbing a book off the shelf in his room, he attempted to settle down in his reading nook and focus on-he checked the cover-herbology, it seemed.

He bounced his leg, focusing half on the book and half on his mothers yelling. He could also hear the ticking of the clock, seconds dragging by as he was still trapped in this _stupid room!_

Throwing a book across the room, Blaise watched with satisfaction as it hit the wall with a thud, and landed hard on the floor. 

The house elfs had been bringing him all of his meals, and he had an adjoined bathroom, so he had been stuck in the confined space for two weeks now. It was slowly driving him insane. Leaping to his feat, he paced around the room like a caged animal, feeling his growing restlessness become more and more unbearable.

“She doesn't understand, does she?”

He stopped, relaxing immediately as a hand rested assuredly on his shoulder. Loki.

“No, she doesn't.”

There was a warm breath on his ear, twin snakes coiled up his legs, “she never will, I'm afraid.”

This made him pause, his mother was extremely overbearing yes, but she would eventually understand this was the best thing for him… right?

The hand tightened, the god tisking at him as the snakes hissed warningly.

“You doubt me?”

“Of course not.” He replied quickly. He was right-of course he was right, Loki was a god after all. Gods knew the truth behind a person's mask, what their true nature was. Blaise was his worshiper, Loki wouldn't lie to him.

“What should I do?”

A beat of silence, and the snakes tightened their hold on his ankles. He shifted, stiffening slightly as a pale hand brushed over his cheek gently on its path to cover his eyes, obstructing his vision. He was pulled backwards slightly, familiar magic swirling through the room as the hand over his eyes pressed harder, covering the entirety of his line of sight. He was completely blinded, relying on his god for guidance.

“Wait, for now.”

He obeyed.

* * *

Azkaban prison was considered inescapable for a reason.

The triangular tower was designed with a hollowed out center, which allowed for the dementors to float easily to any floor they pleased, while the prisoners-if they escaped their cells that is-would be forced to run all the way down a few hundred sets of stairs to the bottom, depending on how high up they were. Because of this security tactic, the worst of the worse were higher and higher up in the looming tower.

Sirius black’s cell nearly reached heaven.

If you were to peer into the decrepit room, you would be much more likely to find a heavily emaciated dog-skin barely clinging to the bone-curled up in a corner of the room, breathing uneasily as its prominent ribs rose and fell with the breathing, than a human man. Now, usually this would be cause for alarm, as Sirius Black was not known to be a dog in any capacity by the populace of Britain's magical community. In fact, only three other creatures ever knew-one of which was dead and the other two as good as. So, this left the forsaken Black heir in a delightful predicament of being in a cell that was _not_ designed to mute his particular skill, which he took great pleasure in exploiting. 

He had originally started to use this delightful little skill of his as a way to keep sane in the hellish tower, as his cell reached up pleadingly to the gods' unmerciful hands, and the dementors swirled around him almost constantly in human form. Sadly, his family was rather horrible at staying sane-his dear cousin's earsplitting cackles from a few cells to his left was proof of that-so he had become rather bonkers himself in his decade long stay in the tower.

There _was_ something that had broken him from the simplicity of a dog's mind and into his insanity addled one-that being a particular article in the papers that the minister had ever so kindly given to him as he passed by that day. There was nothing in it that any normal person would be particularly excited about-but the Heir Black was hardly a normal _anything_ at this point, and he had noticed something-or someone- _very…_ familiar.

For the first time in over a decade a bark-like laugh accompanied the insane cackles of Bellatrix Lestrange in the highest level of the prison, and all the Death Eaters gathered close to the bars of their cells as the two Blacks laughed maniacally.

“Well would ya look at that, ol’ Black’s finally lost it.” Augustus Rookwood spoke up from across the way, as all the other prisoners in the vicinity watched the man laugh boisterously on the floor with interest.

“Never thought I'd see the day.” Antonin Dolohov replied from the right of him, also watching with amusement.

Bellatrix only laughed harder, falling to the floor and rolling in what seemed to be her own feces, and the Death Eaters jeered at them both, mocking and egging them on at the same time, no doubt desperate for entertainment of any kind.

Sirius eventually got himself under control, forcing himself to calm down as his deteriorated stomach muscles clenched painfully.

“Ahahaa… alright chaps, that's all from me.” With a grunt he rose to his hands and knees, and the other prisoners watched with growing realization as he shifted back into his dog form and slipped through the bars of his prison door, starved enough to do it relatively easily. He trotted down past the other cells as all the other prisoners yelled for him to break them out too. He made a great show of it all, hopping along as best he could manage in his less-than-stellar state, before slipping cheekily around the bend and out of sight of the Death Eaters, who were cursing him rather profusely.

_Alright Petey, let's dance!_

Oh yes, Sirius Black was long gone, and would likely never fully recover his mind; lucky for him though, his godson was rather unbalanced as well, even more so now that his inheritance had been fully realized.

Trotting happily down some stairs, Sirius Black prepared himself for a long swim to shore.

Let’s dance indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sirius is quickly turning into my favorite character to write, though I enjoy writing insanity in all of its various forms, so that's probably why.


	41. Dead Man's Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry feels a little too close to death's door for comfort.  
> Remus Lupin doesn't know what he's getting himself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is veeerrrrry Harry centric, just a heads up.

His aunt Petunia had been rather miffed when Harry returned from school with a piercing, but she nearly had a heart attack when he wandered into a gothic themed store and grabbed a spiked leather jacket off a rack to try on. She wasn't able to sway him against it however, and was only just barely able to steer him away from the bowl of various edgy/band related patches at the checkout counter. He only let her do so because he could just as easily transfigure some later on.

Harry considered it a small repreve from being forced out of the house to go shopping, and managed to sneak a few dark denim jeans into the mix of beige as they browsed stacks of clothes. Caragans were all well and good, but Death’s punk rock sense of style had rubbed off on him, and he felt that teen rebellion was something he deserved to enjoy.

Despite his aunt's distaste in his new sense of style, she still enjoyed buying him new clothes, despite the fact that they would likely have to buy him an entire new wardrobe the next year as well.

He followed behind her slowly as she ran about, picking up various tan trousers and smart collared shirts, likely hoping to drown out all the black. He was already contemplating the permanency of color changing charms on fabric as she did so, his urge to hide in shadows growing by the day as his wendigo recovered from its jaunt through the Canadian wilderness. 

The demon never spoke to him, choosing instead to prowl through the forbidden forest of his mind, waiting for the right time to force its way into control again. Tom was already trying to convince him to build up walls to keep the monster at bay, but he felt that would be counterproductive. The main aspect of a creature inheritance was the combining of a magical person's core and that of a magical creature after all, it would be akin to trying to stunt his puberty if he fought against the monster further. Even if he wanted to.

His aunt held a truly hideous jumper up to his chest, and he had to intervene before she actually decided to buy it.

“I think we have enough to last me for the year, auntie.”

Huffing at him, she put the impressively ugly thing back on the rack, and he breathed a sigh of relief. No color changing charms could ever fix that monstrosity, and Harry wondered if Dudley loved his mother very much or was just color blind to be so willing to wear whatever Petunia bought him.

Thirty minutes later he was safely locked away in his room, where he sorted the clothes into two piles of ‘wearable’ and ‘needing intensive color charms’. Falling onto his bed with a sigh, Harry popped four or five capsules of Advil into his mouth, dry swallowing the pills with a grimace. He had suddenly come up with the grand idea of trying muggle pain relievers to help with the growing pains and… everything else, hopefully they would do something. Checking the bottle belatedly for the recommended serving size, he squinted at it and groaned angrly, annoyed that the bottle showed a number much lower than what he had decided was the correct amount. Hoping that he didn't overdose too terribly, Harry kicked off his shoes and flopped further onto his bed, burrowing deep under the covers. He groaned again, wiggling out of his too small pants as if trying to imitate a worm, utterly exhausted.

_Wake me up when the world is ending._

* * *

Harry was forced awake by his stomach growling a few hours later, not the end of the world, and he blearily made his way down to the kitchen with the goal of eating the entire pantry’s stock of food. He got very close to that goal too, before his aunt shooed him out of the room, scolding him for spoiling his dinner.

Harry sat grumpily in the living room after that, stomach growling hungrily despite the few thousand calories he had already consumed. He had written back to Draco that morning before they had left for clothes shopping, detailing that he already had things handled and not to worry about it. Just as he had been sending that one off, Blaise’s owl Hermes had flown in with a letter detailing his current detainment and why his mother needed to be arrested for child abuse. It was extremely dramatic, but a similar letter from Theo about his grandfather's new found anxiety over his inner eye opening made him think that his friends were just _like that._ The point was that the two of them were being forced to owl order all their school supplies, and couldn't go to Diagon with him. Draco had already told them that he wouldn't be able to go shopping either, due to his much needed recovery.

 _Wouldn't that be nice._ Harry thought to himself sardonically, popping another three advils into his mouth as the others had worn off. His recovery time so far seemed to be consisting of hot baths and getting comfortably high on pain meds. Which, in his opinion, was much better than laying around in pain. 

He slumped further into the plush couch, partially angry and partially happy that he wouldn't be able to meet his friends to go shopping for school supplies. It was upsetting for him that he would have to wait even longer to see his friends (read Draco) but he also knew that they needed rest (Draco) so he was okay with the solo trip. Harry perked up a bit, if he was able to go in without his aunt like last time, he would also be able to go do whatever he pleased in the few hours on his own in Diagon Alley.

_You could go to Gringotts and get another inheritance test._

Tom had a good point, it would likely show both his creature inheritance and soul mate’s name now that he was thirteen. He also needed to take a trip down into one of his gifted vaults, as it had various heirlooms from dead or dying families that thought it prudent to shove all their riches onto him. 

“Harry, you ate all the pickles and even drank the juice! If you were really that hungry you could have just told me, I can make you a snack.”

His stomach grumbled in response, and he sunk low into the plush cushions as his cousin snickered besides him.

“Sorry auntie.”

* * *

Remus Lupin sighed tiredly, setting down the well worn letter and rubbing his eyes.

Sirius had escaped Azkaban that morning.

The letter in front of him was one that the headmaster had sent him quickly after the last school year had ended. It detailed a potential contract for the defense position at Hogwarts, and after reading it Remus had truly almost thrown it into the trash. He was far too dangerous to be around children, what had that man been thinking? 

He had held onto the letter though, just leaving it at his desk to mock him. Something was compelling him to take the job, and Remus had spent several sleepless nights trying to come up with a respectable reply.

Sirius had escaped Azkaban that morning.

The morning paper displaying his ex-best friend’s manic grin and the big bold letters exclaiming his escape had Remus bolting out of his dingy dining room chair and up to his room, where he proceeded to write out a very sloppy but earnest reply accepting the post if it was still available. Sirius had broken out to kill Harry, he was sure of it, and that was reason enough for him to go to Hogwarts.

Remus rubbed his face again, regret clouding his mind. He hadn't gone looking for Harry in the muggle world, he didn't have the nerve. He had thought about it for years, crossing out the boy's birthday each year on the calendar and wondering how he was doing, what he was like now.

He had kept his distance though, Dumbledore had told him the boy was happy and in safe hands, he didn't want to ruin that with his presence. So he had left James’ son alone through his childhood, content with the knowledge that the boy was doing well.

Now though... he couldn't just stand by while Sirius ran rampant through the countryside. The traitor would no doubt be hunting down the last Potter to appease his lords spirit in some twisted show of loyalty.

So he was off to Hogwarts, Remus wasn't going to let sweet baby Harry get killed by the man who betrayed his parents.

* * *

Throwing on his darkest clothes and new leather jacket, Harry was out the door before his aunt could force him into something more respectable. Popping a lolly in his mouth (he needed an almost constant intake of calories lately) he walked swiftly down the street, intent on taking the knight bus to Diagon Alley.

It was a horribly sunny day, and Harry sweat slightly in his dark clothing, but pressed on anyway. The chanting and growls that constantly seemed to bother him quieted the hotter it became, and he welcomed the quiet with open arms… and then got bored with it. Deciding to fill the quiet with a more enjoyable noise, he threw his headphones on and pressed play on the walkman on his hip, bobbing along to a random Green Day song. Dudley had been nice enough to get him a new walkman for his birthday, and the two of them had snuck out to a record store to buy a bunch of songs (for Harry) and porn magazines (for Dudley) about a week after that.

It was mid-August now, and while Harry’s muscle pains hadn’t improved in the slightest, he had gotten better at eating enough to moderately satisfy the wendigo, so he was generally doing a hell of a lot better, though the constant buzz from his budding advil addiction was likely a big part of that.

Pointing his wand out to the street once all the muggles were out of sight, he watched the knight bus rocket into sight in front of him. 

Stepping on, he pulled a couple sickles out and handed them to Stan, who was staring rather obnoxiously at his scar. Harry glared tiredly and mumbled out “Diagon Alley, mate”, not wanting to bother with the fame today.

Plopping down on a bed, he cast a sticking charm just in time as the bus rocketed off again. Ignoring the stares from Stan as the man's brain cells started rubbing together to figure out who he was, Harry closed his eyes and waited for his stop. 

_I should have just apparated._

_You don't have a license._

_Rule three of Slytherin: don't get caught._

_That doesn't relate to actual crimes!_

_Weren't you the leader of a terrorist group or something?_

The bed he was on slammed _hard_ into the back of the bus, and Harry grunted nocomitally. This was by far his favorite mode of magical transportation despite the rather shoddy safety measures, so he begrudgingly submitted himself to the ride.

Ten minutes and a few bruises later, Harry hopped off the bus. He made his way into Diagon, ignoring the open mouthed stares as every pureblood in his vicinity lost their fucking minds at his obscenely muggle get up. He usually made an effort to dress the part of the perfect pureblood heir-really he had-but Harry was tweaked out on ibuprofen at the moment and would probably flip off the minister if given a good enough reason.

_This is why proper recovery time is important, Leech, go home and rest._

_Nah._

Climbing the sloping steps of Gringotts two at a time, Harry strolled in without a care in the world. His walkman had fritzed out with all the ambient magic in the air once he had gotten to the alley, so he pulled his now useless headphones off and placed them around his neck.

He walked up to the nearest free teller, tripping over his feet on the way there. “Ello, can I speak to Griphook?” 

The goblin glared at him rather hatefully, but got up and went through to a back room. While he was waiting, Harry got a little fuzzy in the head and stood there for a moment, humming quietly.

_I’m going to take over and force water down your throat._

_That’s cruel._

“Heir Potter, always a pleasure.”

Shaking himself slightly, Harry glanced down to Griphook, who seemed rather upset with him.

He raised an eyebrow, “have I done something?” 

Griphook sneered, “it’s what you haven’t done, follow me.”

Harry followed behind the goblin obediently, only mildly concerned about whatever it was that he was so angry about. Sitting down in a familiar (and uncomfortable) chair, his eyes widening with excitement as the goblin in front of him pulled out a long ceremonial dagger. 

“How much do I need to pay to get myself one of those beauties?”

Griphook grinned nastily, “more than all of your vaults combined.”

A groan, “blast.”

Setting the dagger down, the goblin pulled out various papers, “it has come to our attention that you have not only refused to reply to our various correspondence in regards to your heirship, despite-”

“-I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only ‘correspondence’-” he made the air quotes with his fingers, grinning sardonically, elbows on boney knees, “-I've received from Gringotts is withdrawal notices.” Harry ran his finger down the side of the dagger in front of him, fascinated with the craftsmanship.

“You… What?” Griphook seemed flabbergasted with this knowledge, Harry was still pleasantly buzzed.

“Haven't gotten dick from you lot, yea. You sure I can't buy one of these?” Tom groaned tiredly, mumbling about the woes of parenting.

Griphook took a moment to watch him very closely, “I apologize, Heir Potter, it seems that we have done a disservice to you, could it be that your magical guardian has not been receiving our correspondence?”

Harry squinted at him, “my magical guardian? As in Albus Dumbledore, the man who placed like-a bajillion compulsions on me? That magical guardian?” Harry was pretty sure he was starting to come down from the high, if the growing ach in his limbs was any indication, pity.

Griphook rubbed his eyes, “yes, that one. I'm afraid this has become rather complicated.”

“Couldn’t you just send the letters to me instead? Can't be awfully difficult to do.” Harry highly doubted that Dumbledore really had that much business being his guardian anyway, being who he was. Bastard had too many titles as is.

“I'm afraid not, a young heir such as yourself would have to be emancipated to do such a thing, or change your guardian I suppose.”

_Well hey, I just so happen to have a potential magical guardian who just broke out of prison._

_This is a phenomenally stupid idea._

“Does a magical guardian have to have a clean criminal record?”

It was Griphook’s turn to squint at him, “...It would be considerably more difficult for someone with a criminal record to gain custody, yes.”

“Blast.”

It was quiet as semi-high Harry tried to think of a solution and the goblin considered his retirement plans.

“Okay but what if they’re cleared?”

“Heir Potter, you can not have Sirius Black as a magical guardian.”

“Well why the bloody hell not!” he threw his hands up in the air, wincing as his muscles disagreed with the motion.

Griphook was about to respond before he took notice of the grimace, and seemed to realize something, “Heir Potter, your thirteenth birthday was a fortnight ago! You can not be out of bed, what are you doing here?”

He slumped back in the seat, squinting through the pain, “I have to get my school supplies you know.”

The goblin tisked at him, the prat. “This was very foolhardy of you Heir Potter, I can give you a pain relieving potion but you truly _must_ rest your body.”

That seemed extremely unappealing to Harry, but to his dismay he was practically forced out of the office, pain reliever and book catalogue in hand. He choked the foul tasting liquid down and wandered out, feeling about ten times worse than he had walking in.

_I'm going down Knockturn._

_Harry-No._

_This would be a wasted trip otherwise._

He cast a strong notice-me-not charm and picked a random piece of wood of the ground, transfiguring it into a long black cloak. He might feel like a dead man, but he still wasn’t stupid. Stubborn as all hell? Yes. But not stupid.

Pulling the cloak over his body and making sure that any distinctive feature was covered, Harry made his way into Knockturn alley, notice-me-not still in place for extra security. 

The alley was just as dingey and decrepit as he remembered, though the novelty was wearing off. He brushed past street vendors and the homeless, keeping his eyes firmly on the storefronts and names. He went far deeper than last time, passing his fair share of brothels, bars, and unsavory people as he wandered deeper. 

The glimmer of something caught his eye in a large gap between two building. Peering into the side-alley, he caught sight of a small, free standing door. He creeped further into the alley, intrigued.

The door was banged up and old, with pale green mold growing in various spots, but the magic that whipped around it made Harry curious. Reaching out and grasping the door handle-which was mostly just rust at this point-he pushed the door open with a creak and found the other side was not a continuation of the alley, but another store. This didn't shock him particularly, and he stepped inside, the door shutting behind him with a click.

* * *

Theo had been spending the last three weeks laid up in bed, partially blinded. His inner eye awakening had done a lot more than just give him a painful migraine, and he was being treated for blindness in his left eye. The mediwitch his grandfather had hired seemed confident that it would be healed up soon, but his grandfather was already looking into removing it and having a magical eye implanted in its place. Theo honestly didn't care what happened, as long as by the time September 1st rolled around, he still had two identical brown eyes that actually worked.

He sighed, shifting in discomfort as the bandage over his eye rubbed uncomfortably on his skin. Why they hadn’t come up with bandages that were less scratchy was beyond him.

Getting up slowly, working as best he could with the shoddy depth perception, Theo stumbled to his feat, insistent on moving. His legs groaned from dis-use, and his back ached something awful, but he managed to shuffle over to his bathroom door. Stopping to stretch, he sighed as his back popped pleasantly. 

Opening the door, he got a good look at (what he considered to be) a big mess. His hair hadn't been cut in a while, letting his natural waves fall all over the place. He blinked blearly at his reflection, he lost the rest of his baby fat at least, though only eating soup for nearly a month probably had something to do with that (it didn't).

Sighing slightly, Theo made his way to the bath, wanting to get clean through more than just cleaning charms for once. Honestly, it was his eye that was malfunctioning, not his legs, he could walk just fine.

Steam clouded the mirror as he sank happily into the water, making sure to keep his eyes firmly above it. Theo had no illusions about his grandfather’s actions, and in some ways agreed with them. He was the only possible heir stretched over three generations, if he somehow died before having children, the Nott fortune and heirship would land on the Rosiers, who were his closest cousins. So it made quite a bit of sense for his grandfather to be so overprotective, but it didn't mean that Theo had to like it.

He sank further into the water, groaning as the sound of a door slamming allerted him to his grandfather coming into the room.

“Theodore? Where are you!”

_Back to it then._

* * *

Harry strode into the peculiar store, marveling at the strange trinkets littering the shelves.

“Harry Potter!”

 _Bloody-_ “Fuck!”

Whipping around, Harry stumbled backwards as a crazy-looking old crone darted forward to grab at him. She got his wrist in a vice grip and refused to let go, her eyes wide with excitement.

“I could feel the magic in the air but couldn’t let myself think it was true!” she grabbed at his cloak, yanking it off as he continued to pull at his arm, trying with no avail to dislodge himself from her grasp.

“Get. Off!” another strong tug and she finally let go, turning and running off to a side room with shocking speed, yelling excitedly about magic and nearly lost opportunities. He took the moment to catch his breath and settle his nerves.

_Absolutely mental, that one._

Harry turned to the door, intent on getting the hell out before the old woman came back. He sighed tiredly as he found that the door had, unsurprisingly, disappeared.

_In hindsight I should have seen this coming._

_I don't even need to say I told you so._

“Yes! It was such a great shock when the gods told me-” the batty old lady returned from the stacks with something wrapped in deep purple silk, still chattering away, “-I almost didn't believe them-truly how could you blame me. Harry Potter, a demon! Well, it was almost too much for my old heart to handle.” she shoved the silk covered thing into his arms, before bending down and picking up his cloak, throwing it messily over him once more. 

“Now off you pop dearie, and keep her nice and clean. Shoo!” and with that the door reappeared and he was thrust quite rudely out and into the alley, the cloak just barely covering his scar.

He stood there, eyes wide and confusion etched on his face, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened and failing quite spectacularly.

_Well… that was interesting._

Harry looked down at the silk covering, pulling it back slightly to reveal a large, clear, crystal carved in the shape of a human skull.

He covered it again, and continued on his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a firm believer in early days Michael Jackson's domination of the sexy skinny-legged boy archetype, and no I don't take constructive criticism.  
> PS. did you know that the word muggle is a slang term for weed? Neither did I, but I guess that means we're all potheads, not potterheads. (ahem)  
> PPS. I wasn't high while writing this, I promise, just listening to 80's-90's rock to get in the appropriate headspace. (I think it worked a little too well, thank you Twisted Sister)


	42. Smells Like Teen Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations for the ever approaching school year are overshadowed by strange skulls and magic eyes.

Soft purple silk mocked him silently as he studied the silhouette of the currently hidden crystal skull. He had attempted to study the object once he had gotten home, but it seemed insistent on staying under its baroque coverings. Harry had set the skull onto his desk and left for a time, the silk being thrown to the other side of the room and onto his bed. 

He had returned not five minutes later to find the skull had been re-covered, deep purple waves draped elegantly over the cranium. 

His apprehension over the mysterious object was growing by the second.

_This... is a tad suspect._

_Truly? My, I hadn't noticed!_

_No one likes a Sassy Sue, Riddle._

It was more than just a ‘tad suspect’ really, crystal skulls were obnoxiously rare as is, and not particularly well liked by the vast majority of polite society. Sure, divinators flocked to them to try and get an assured glimpse into the future, as the skulls were well known for being much better conductors of magic than a normal crystal ball, but anyone who studied divination was either far _far_ away from being members of polite society or...Theo, he supposed.

Though, even divinators knew the risks of using such an object, as every crystal skull that had been found always had an extra hint of darker magics, something a little monstrous and… demonic?

That was partially why they were tiptoed around by the magical community. The term ‘crystal skull’ was widely used to reference a very narrow niche of carved crystals. The parameters were that the object had to be a large, clear quartz crystal that had been cut to form an anatomically accurate skull, and then left to sit in a heavily magical area for a few thousand of years. The theoretics around these skulls were vague, as they had all been created in a short time frame by an unknown group in mesoamerica thousands of years ago, but everyone generally agreed that letting a magic conductor sit in a cave for a few thousand years was a good way to get the bloody thing possessed by some sort of nasty black magic.

There were only about thirteen of the skulls known to exist, though many of them were currently in the possession of muggles. Apparently because muggles were (generally) far more inclined to grave-rob than magicals.

Since all the currently known crystal skulls had originated from mesoamerica, it was likely that this one had as well. His crystal skull was about the size of an adult male's, and he could already tell by the ambient magic surrounding it that the thing was _very_ old. He breathed in, heightened senses telling him everything about the magic. Dark and light, black and white, good and evil-polarized magic and everything in between had touched the damned thing. He hadn't noticed in Knockturn, too busy being confused, but now that he was sitting right there and letting it all fall over him… Harry was extremely intimidated by the object.

Pulling the deep purple silk from the skull once more, he watched the sunlight hit it beautifully, throwing colorful refractions against the walls. He had read up on the skulls in the nearest public library, knowing that the muggles likely had more on them than your typical (read legal) bookstore in Diagon. They were said to have various healing properties, and the refraction of light through the skull was an important part of that healing process. 

He couldn’t work out any sort of enchantments or runes on the thing, but the light running through it was obviously doing _something._ The sun streamed in and hit the skull head on, and in the place where a brain would be, there was a growing ball of multi-colored light. A kaleidoscope of colors danced around the room and swirled inside the skull. Tangible, thick, and… dangerous. 

_It seems to be gathering power and storing it._ Tom seemed fascinated with the skull, Harry's apprehension grew.

_Should I cover it back up?_

The silk already seemed to want to leap out of his hand, tugging at his strong grip pathetically as the skull continued to glow with a rainbow of colors. Realizing suddenly, Harry turned his wand on the silk, casting every diagnostic charm under the sun to figure out the enchantments on the stupid thing.

What he found was marginally more shocking than the skull's history. The thing appeared to be semi _sentient._

“Bloody hell.” 

Who the hell _was_ that lady from the shop? Not just any random old crone could hunt down a large crystal skull and then make a piece of cloth semi-sentient to cover the blasted thing. Silk was heavily magic resistant as it, likely due to the fabrics smooth waves. Enchantments tended to slip from it more often, needing more upkeep and recasting, there was no way this thing could be considered sustainable without a considerable amount of magic and skill.

 _Or a grounding stone._ Sometimes, Tom just said the _dumbest_ things.

_I'm sorry, do you see any grounding stones on this piece of thin, light fabric?_

_Perhaps it was built into the embroidery?_

That was an even _more_ baffling hypothesis. The embroidery along the silk was a slightly brighter purple than the fabric, but was so tiny that it was hard to make out what the pattern even _was._ Squinting slightly, Harry turned the silk in his hands, trying to find a better angle. He recognized a section of it suddenly, and looking even closer his eyes widened comically.

_“Bloody Hell.”_

Runes. An absolute metric _fuckton_ of impossibly tiny runes were embroidered into the silk. They criss crossed over and through each other to create a thick metric of interlocking runes. It was incredible, he gaped, it was one of the most detailed examples of rune matrics he had ever seen. Tom had also gone quiet in shock.

Harry sat back with a long drawn out breath, eyes blown wide in awe.

_That lady just… handed this thing to me…?_

He questioned if the skull was _nearly_ as special as its embellished covering as he brushed his hand carefully over the runework. This explained how the thing could be sentient, several of the runes could be used for that sort of thing, the sorting hat likely had a similar arrangement.

Letting go of the fabric, he watched as the thing slithered (much like a snake) over to the skull and draped across it, seeming to sigh with relief.

_Fascinating._

He pinched a corner of the fabric between two of his fingers, watching with wide eyes as a different corner fluttered up and slapped uselessly at his hand, trying to dislodge him. It reminded him of the muggle movie Aladdin-which he and his cousin had gone to see when it came out the year prior-and the magical carpet in the film, how it had moved and flowed.

Harry left the silk alone and watched it fold under and around the skull, trying to cover as much of the crystal's surface as possible.

_What do you think I should do with it?_

_Leave both of the thrice damned things alone and get some bloody rest._

Harry groaned but decided to comply, the pain reliever potion was wearing off anyway.

* * *

Theo was layed up on a medical bed, annoyed and tired. His left eye was heavily inflamed and deteriorating by the day, basically unsalvageable.

_What's the point of magic if it can't fix this?_

He knew deep down that it was an unreasonable request of magic to fix everything, but he really didn't want to bother with getting a second eye. This feeling only grew as the mediwitch showed him their selection of magical eyes, all of which were various shades of blue or yellow. He could only assume that the enchantments made them that kind of color, not just because people preferred them.

“Is there any way to get an eye that matches my natural eye color?” she gave him a pitying look, that would be a no then.

“This one is quite sharp.” his grandfather pointed at a shocking blue eye, the properties listed under it showed that the thing would give him perfect eyesight as well as the ability to spot poisons and potions in his food.

“Awfully jaring though.” Theo didn’t really care for any sort of fancy enchantments on his eye, less is more so to speak, but his grandfather was quite excited about the idea of more protection for his heir.

“Are you sure there aren't any more colors?” Theo was practically whining at this point, he knew, but honestly this was ridiculous.

“Well we do have a small selection of green eyes-” that was another no then. The only green eyes he could stand to look at anymore were Harry’s, and that was only when the boy wasn’t in one of his moods. Theo passed that avenue with disdain and focused his right eye on the potential pairs in front of him. There was an eye of a dull yellow color that seemed to have only been enchanted with perfect vision, which was calling to him with its simplicity.

“How about this one, Theodore?” his grandfather pointed to another blue eye, which seemed to be twice as large as the others and had an absurd amount of enchantments listed below it.

The mediwitch came to his rescue on that one, “I'm afraid that particular eye is most often used by aurors, and can’t actually be inserted into the socket due to its size. He would have to wear a rather large eye patch.”

Theo breathed a sigh of relief as his grandfather made a face and vetoed the eye immediately, turning to look around the other ones. Theo was quite sure that in the end he would have no choice about which eye he got saddled with, and layed back down on the bed, accepting whatever fate his grandfather chose for him.

* * *

Draco was of a similar disposition, lying on his stomach as the family mediwizard pottered around with a frankly ludicrous amount of potions and inks.

_I'm too young to have a tattoo._

It wasn't a permanent one, thank Merlin, but would stay till he had enough control over his wings to be able to keep them hidden on his own. The runic arrays that were to be painted and ‘staining’ his skin were meant to do the job for him before that time, keeping the wings in some state of constant invisibility whenever he had fabrics covering them. He would still (sadly) feel the wings under his clothing, but any sort of movement or lumpiness that came from him shifting them around or adjusting his posture would be unseen by everyone. Of course once his back was bare of fabric the wings would be revealed once more, as the runes weren’t nearly strong enough to completely hide two pale wings in clear view.

“Alright Draconis, I'll be applying the sticking agent now. Please hold still while I do so, it is quite itchy.”

The old man’s family had been serving the Malfoys for generations, a family alliance securing each generation's silence in regards to the veela inheritance as well as all other medical issues.

The potion was _extremely_ itchy, and Draco could barely hold still and the man rubbed it in, the itch only growing in intensity as it sank into his freshly healed back. He squirmed a little, the man pressing down harder to keep him still.

“That should do, I'll start drawing on the runes now.”

The runes were even more unpleasant, as they had to be drawn with a special type of quill that would work on flesh. Occasionally, the blasted thing would catch on his skin and nick him, which forced the mediwizard to stop and heal the nick, then reapply more of the itchy potion. The entire experience was overall just incredibly uncomfortable, and he breathed a sigh of relief once it was finally over.

The runes raced up and down his spine, spreading out down his lower back, just barely missing his wings as they curled back up and swirled around his sides to meet back up at the start across his shoulder blades.

They looked fine, he supposed, but Draco really preferred to not have them at all. He really never liked the idea of tattoos on his own skin, though they occasionally looked quite interesting on others.

He sighed, pulling a loose shirt over his still sticky back and adjusting his wings to lay flat and comfortable. Walking from the room, he met his father at the door.

“May I see?” 

His father examined his covered back, exclaiming happily how the runes appeared already in effect.

“Excellent job as always, Maylis.” The Lord Malfoy wandered into the room and started up a conversation with the old man, seemingly having forgotten that his son was still in the doorway. Moving back along, Draco shifted his wings a tad, the stickiness of his back clinging to the feathers uncomfortably.

Wandering out to the garden, Draco caught sight of vibrant scales as Thasin slithered through the brush besides him. Harry had practically thrown the snake at him, mumbling something about her preferring the blond anyway. Draco had been enjoying the snake's companionship, despite the fact that he had no way of understanding what she was constantly hissing at him. She kept the pompous albino peacocks from bothering him when he strolled in the garden at least, so he didn't feel too milfed about the language barrier.

“I'll be going back to Hogwarts soon Thasin, Harry as well.” she hissed something at him, he assumed it was some sort of acknowledgment.

“You'll be coming along too you know, don't try to get out of it.” an annoyed sounding hiss answered him.

“I can always send Persephone off to fetch you on September first if you decide to slither off and hide.” she darted off into the shrubs, apparently done with the conversation and his threats.

Draco stopped at a pergola covered with flowering vines, settling himself down on a bench and staring out at the immaculate gardens. He loved the manor, but Hogwarts held a certain feeling that couldn't be explained or recreated. It was the magic in the air, the not-quite-but-almost sentient castle that called him to the cold stone and mysterious corridors. It was a home to him, the twisting halls and towers reaching the sky. One day, Draco wished to perhaps become a teacher there, just so that he could live on the grounds full time if he so chose. Potions and herbology were his favorite subjects at the moment, perhaps if he did well enough he could get a mastery in both subjects and teach one of them.

_I wonder if Harry would want to be a professor as well._

He doubted it, honestly. Harry was brilliant, sure, but wasn't all that good at explaining his brilliance to others. The taller boy would probably be going into politics like Draco was expected to do, climbing the ladder and changing the country for the better no doubt. Harry would be damn good at it too, he had become the unquestioned prince of Slytherin in his _second year_ as a half-blood after all. Such a feat that took considerable skill and knowledge of politics, as well as a great deal of raw talent and pure nerve that Draco didn't feel he personally possessed. Sure, with time and the right drive he could do it, but politics had never been something the blond had wanted to do for an extended period.

He honestly half expected Harry to get bored of all the politicking eventually and try to take over Britain, probably just to see if he could. 

_He would do it, effortlessly._

Draco smiled warmly, Harry really didn't seem to have much in the way of limits, and often did whatever the hell he wanted, even if it was a supposedly ‘impossible’ feat. Though, anyone who had vanquished the dark lord as an infant had to be quite extraordinary, so he couldn't fault the guy on that.

He sighed, Harry was a certain kind of extraordinary though, special in a way no one else could replicate. He hadn't seen anyone quite like Harry before and doubted that anyone else could even _attempt_ to get close.

“Draco? Where did you run off to?” his mother's voice was far off, likely from the back porch. It broke hin from his thoughts though, and he got up, dusting his pants of imaginary dirt.

“Coming!”

* * *

Blaise was still trapped in his room, slowly going insane.

“Let me out, Pipsy.”

“I can’s not be doing that, Master Blasey.”

“Let me out.”

“I has been ordered not to, Master Blasey.”

“Let. Me. Out.”

“I must be returning to the kitchens, Master Blasey.”

“Oh come on, live a little! What's five minutes of freedom going to do?”

The elf appeared nervous, and he felt a little pity for her. But honestly, he was the one that needed pity, considering that he had been locked in this god forsaken room for over a month now. He told her so, and she appeared even more nervous, rubbing her hands together and trying to argue without actually arguing.

“I _must_ be returning to the kitchens, Master Blasey.”

He sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly, “Fine.”

She popped away quickly, and Blaise slumped, defeated, in his chair. Despite his current detainment, he had been doing relatively well over the summer. Loki had been visiting him often, showing him fascinating magics and the olde ways occasionally. The god’s sickly green magic had soaked into the room, swirling lazily around the place.

Rubbing his face tiredly, Blaise looked to Hermes at the window, who was watching him with an air of extreme amusement.

“And what do you think you’re lookin’ at?”

No answer.

_I'm going insane._

Picking himself off of the chair, Blase made his way over to the window, petting Hermes distractedly as he looked out to the Irish gulf, waves crashing against the shore in repetitive motions. Italy had much sunnier and warmer waters, and he missed the airy villa and huge windows to lounge in front of, warm sun casting light in through the floor to ceiling windows.

Ireland was where he had grown up, but Italy was his home.

He turned from the window with a sigh, he couldn't even go down to the chilly water and pick sea shells out of the sand, stuck in his room the way he was. If his room was closer to the ground he would just sneak out through the window, but he was on the fourth floor and didn’t have a death wish. Semi-sticking charms cast to his palms crossed his mind briefly, but Blaise didn't feel he had the right amount of control over his magic to pull off the kind of pinpoint accuracy required.

Blaise finished the circle and plopped back down on the chair he had started at, knowing that in ten minutes or so he would call Pipsy again and the cycle would repeat.

* * *

Padfoot crept through a densely wooded forest, sniffing out a familiar scent.

He had no bloody clue where he was, but after crashing through the underbrush into a random clearing, he got the faint whiff of a very familiar scent. It was over a year old, but the source was relatively close, so he could still track it. The scent had changed slightly over the years, and had an undertone of danger that made Padfoot wimper quietly, but this was his godson-no doubt about it. 

He was nearing civilization, finding that he must have been in the woods surrounding a muggle neighborhood. Creeping out of the forest and into some dense bushes, he trotted along with his nose to the dirt, following the faint trail. The scent grew stronger as he got closer to the street. 

Peeking out of the bushes, he looked around warily, still getting a strong whiff of _something_ that instilled a primordial fear in him. Silent as the night, Padfoot crept from the bushes and into the light of day. Gaining confidence, he started a fast trot down the street, unknowingly headed straight towards number four Privet Drive.

The familiar scent and its dangerous undertone nearly tripled suddenly as long, thin legs covered by ripped skinny jeans came into view. He looked up, and was met with familiar green eyes and unfamiliar everything else.

_Harry?_

The boy sure smelled like Harry, and the hint of danger on him was starting to slowly make more sense. His godson couldn't possibly be completely human, he was far too tall for just barely thirteen.

“Hey there, snuffles.” 

The teen squatted down and scratched behind Padfoots ear, the spikes on his leather jacket catching the sun- _what I would do to get my hands on something like that, those spikes are badass-_ Padfoot excitedly barked, this was his godson alright, and seemed to be taking after him in fashion taste as well! James was probably rolling in his grave.

Harry ruffled his fur one more time before getting up and walking back to wherever he was staying, Padfoot followed quickly behind him.

* * *

_You're not keeping it._

_That ‘it’ is my godfather you know._

_I don't care, I’m not dealing with it._

_Circe, you're dramatic._

Harry hadn't really been planning on hunting down Sirius till he got to Hogwarts, but if the guy was going to just mosey around the bend like that he could hardly pass up the opportunity. The only difficulty would be convincing Aunt Petunia to help the dog, but he had a good fix for that too.

“Oi, Dudders.”

His cousin was in the backyard, out of the way of any windows. Probably doing drugs.

“Wha-oh! Harry, mate-the hell?” he fumbled with a bag, clumsily stuffing it back into his pocket, definitely drugs then.

“Found a dog.”

“A wot?” Dudley was still awfully slow. Harry just pointed behind him where Padfoot sat obediently, tongue lolling around.

“Blimey, you sure that isn't a wolf?” Dudley loved dogs for some reason-probably Aunt Marge’s influence-but Petunia had been hemming and hawing over actually getting the teen one for a good while now. This was the perfect opportunity to push her in a good direction.

“Nah, his ears are more floppy than a wolf’s. Probably a mutt.”

Padfoot looked extremely insulted.

“Think ma will let ‘im in the house?”

“Eh, probably not. We could make a case for the backyard though.”

They did, in fact, make an effort to convince the Dursley matriarch to clean and feed the dog, Dudley did most of the talking. Harry already had a few contingency plans he was stewing up with a disgruntled Tom in case this one didn't work out, so he just stood back and watched the fireworks mostly. Intervening only occasionally as voices raised.

Petunia held firm against her son’s onslaught however, and the dog was forced outside with a large plate of leftover meat and an even larger bowl of water that sat on the porch.

“If that poor thing comes back around again, I'll set out another bowl and some leftovers, but strays can have fleas and worms and god knows what else. I _won't_ have it in my house.”

Harry was happy enough that his Godfather would be assured occasional meals, and left Dudley to his dog-lover rant. 

He had a mysterious crystal skull and sentient silk that he needed to figure out before the school year started, Sirius would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summer was a bit longer this year, but I felt like it was important to detail their recovery time and other exploits (ie. breaking the FUCK outta prison. Sirius is a bad bitch). The next chapter is off to Hogwarts though, so we've officially ended our summer happenings.


	43. Death's Shadow is in my Corner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hogwarts express has some late boarding passengers, and Harry reveals more than he wanted to.

Harry put the crystal skull on display in the fourth compartment of his trunk.

He hadn't had much use for the small studio apartment that Tom had made for him in his first year, and it had just been gathering dust in his trunk for the past two years. Now though, he felt that the private space would be more useful this year than the last two. He had set the skull (and it's purple cover) on his dresser, where he had drawn a circular rune meant to keep any malevolent magic from escaping. The skull still freaked him out a little, and he didn't want to take any chances with it being around his friends.

Walking out of the house, Harry scratched Padfoot's ear, “I'm off to my totally not magical boarding school Snuffles, it would be super weird if I saw you there so this is goodbye.”

The dog looked at him strangely and got up, wandering away to the woods behind the house.

The drive to Kings Cross was quiet, and the walk to the platform was equally silent. Harry didn't feel particularly inclined to pay attention to anything going on, and he quickly found himself taking up an entire bench in his regular compartment, legs thrown out on the plush seating and back against the window. 

He was trying to come up with a rune scheme that would protect his walkman from ambient magic, and Tom whispered ideas in his mind as he wrote out potential runes on paper. Theo was the first to arrive, and stopped in the doorway.

“Harry?”

He glanced up, “...Theo?”

They stared at each other for a moment. Theo had finally hit puberty, apparently.

“You got awfully hot over the summer, mate.”

“Wha- you grew a foot!”

“Four inches actually, no big deal.”

Theo seemed extremely perplexed, Harry was wondering why he suddenly had heterochromia.

“Hey, why’s your eye blue?”

Theo sighed tiredly, coming all the way into the compartment and dropping onto an adjacent seat, “I had to get it replaced. An inner eye awakening sometimes affects your normal eyes negatively, but it usually isn't so bad that an eye just stops working, so it was a surprise when mine deteriorated so quickly.”

Harry winced, “tough luck, mate.”

Silence descended onto the compartment as Harry returned to his runes and Theo tried to figure out how Harry had managed to grow four inches in such a short period of time. Harry could hear the tick of Theo’s wrist watch in the silence.

“It was your creature inheritance, wasn't it.”

“Yup.” popping the p as he continued to write, Harry didn't even look up from his notebook.

“You aren't going to tell me?” Theo pressed further, his itch to understand the current mystery overriding his sense of tact.

“You haven't figured it out?” He replied, cheekily.

Theo narrowed his eyes, Harry was deflecting. Something was wrong with this situation, “you're some sort of demon, I’ve figured that much.”

“Bravo, ten points to slytherin.”

“You can't keep it secret forever you know.”

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees, frost crystalizing on the windows. Harry turned to the other boy slowly, anger clouding his mind. Theo automatically realized his mistake.

_Glowing, angry green eyes._

“Watch yourself, Nott.”

Theo sat back against the seat with a thump, hands clenched into fists.

The compartment went back to a (much more tense, and cold) silence as Harry furiously ignored the other boy in the compartment. Theo’s hands were shaking, trying to forget the glowing eyes as they bore down on him.

The door slammed open suddenly, “My mother's a bitch.” 

Blaise had arrived.

Stepping into the compartment, it took the italian teen a good three seconds to take in the boys’ new appearances before seemingly accepting it as the new norm and settling down in a chair.

“Why, exactly, is your mother a bitch?” Harry raised a single eyebrow, Theo was still silent.

“You're joking! She locked me away in a prison for nearly a month and a half!”

“And why exactly was that, Blaise?” Theo seemed to be trying to piss everyone off today.

Blaise was certainly on the road to being pissed off, “None of your bloody business.”

“Well I disagree!”

“Why is everyone fighting?”

Harry’s eyes met Draco’s as the shorter boy entered the compartment, looking around at the budding argument. An instant connection snapped into place as the two boys gasped. Softly glowing green met sharp, steely gray. A sprawling forest reached up with towering branches to brush along low hanging clouds. Fog whipping around flora. Harry felt the rush of cold wind on his face, ice in his heart; fire flickering across smooth skin, an angel’s halo. Draco’s eyes widened marginally, dilating as Harry held his gaze. The world was collapsing and reforming and collapsing again around them in a fiery, freezing inferno, biting snow storms cutting across his cheeks as trees burned to the earth. The smell of peppermint and cigarette smoke intertwined together.

_Mine._

Blaise raised an eyebrow, eyes darting between the two. “Riiiight… you two done having sex with your eyes?”

The spell was broken, and Draco blushed deeply, sitting down next to Harry as the older boy pulled his legs up, muttering something about a cool jacket, face growing redder by the second. Harry glared at Blaise for ruining the moment, not quite sure why there was a moment in the first place.

Tom's voice cut through his musings. _Are you daft?_

_What?_

_He's your soulmate, Leech. I thought you were smarter than this._

Harry's eyes raised marginally, his wendigo creeping forward with curiosity. 

_Ohhhhhhh._

* * *

Padfoot ran at top speed through dark woods, jumping over fallen logs and under low hanging branches. He had left Petunia’s family soon after Harry had gone off to Hogwarts, convinced that Peter would be there with the Weasley boy.

The past few weeks observing Harry had been... interesting for the crazed man. Harry looked nothing like either of his parents-acted nothing like them too. The teen was sarcastic, analytical and sneaky. He twisted conversations and played his family with ease.

Slytherin to the bone.

Sirius had grown up with slytherins, had understood them at a fundamental level. He had always known that deep down, he had a bit of slytherin in him as well, though it was uncommon for him to tap into it. So he could understand his godson and his actions, though the aftershocks of the dementors helped that understanding along.

There was something about Harry that unsettled him though, a darkness that wrapped around the boys heart and penetrated the air around him. Sirius couldn't make out what it was, but felt confident that the darkness wasn't directed at him negatively.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, Padfoot leaped over a large boulder blocking his path. He would have to stop and find food soon, but he would try to get as far as possible before that time came.

* * *

Tracey and a very smug looking Daphne were greeted by a very tense atmosphere as they stepped into the compartment. Theo and Blaise were glaring at each other, on the cusp of another argument no doubt. Harry and Draco glanced at each other every few seconds, the shorter boy blushing rather impressively.

Daphne sat down primily next to Blaise, ignoring the other three in the room. Tracey zeroed in on Harry, her muggle ancestry shining through.

“Harry! Is that a new sense of style I smell?”

Draco scooted closer to him, eyes narrowed.

“Yea, what about it?”

Her eyes lit up, “I got some black nail polish from my muggle aunt over the summer, do you want me to paint your nails?”

Harry didn't feel that he had much say in the matter, and switched seats with Draco so he could sit between the two. That's how a good portion of the ride went, as Daphne eventually roped Blaise into conversation, and Theo stuck his nose moodily into a book. Tracey painted Harry's nails expertly, and Harry could admit that they suited him. As his were drying, a fascinated Draco had his nails painted as well.

“Now you two match!” Tracey seemed very pleased with herself, admiring their nails with glee. Harry rolled his eyes, pulling back out his notebook to continue brainstorming runes. Everyone in the compartment halted what they were doing as the train slowed and then stopped, temperature dropping marginally.

Harry mumbled a curse, he had forgotten about the dementors.

“Why’d we stop?” Tracey rose from her seat and peered out of the window, the temperature continued to drop, and through the darkness outside a tall figure could be seen floating past.

“Everyone stay away from the door.” Harry got up, moving towards the middle of the compartment. His commanding tone had everyone up and against the window in a heartbeat, shivering slightly as the penetrating cold seeped through their clothes. An icy chill was freezing the room, ice crystalizing the windows and making everyone's breath visible. 

The rattling of chains allerted Harry to the dementors approach, and he pulled out his wand, standing firmly in front of the huddled group. The freezing heart inside of him was colder than the surrounding air, and he felt comforted by the cold as his friends grew more and more uncomfortable.

A looming shadow obstructed the view into the hall, and the handle started to shake. There was a shrek behind him, probably Tracy.

The dementor’s hand was the first thing into the room, and the temperature dropped another few degrees as it moved further in. Scratchy, uneven wheezing was the only sound it made, floating ever closer towards them. Harry heard someone fall to the floor, the others scrambling to grab a hold of them

“Harry-”

“Shut up.”

Draco’s mouth clicked shut audibly.

He stepped forward, putting himself firmly between the dementor and his friends, eyes locked onto the hooded figure before him. It raised a long, skeletal hand, running it slowly down his cheek. Almost... tenderly. 

“There is nothing here for you.”

Its hand ran further down his cheek, then reversed, moving upwards and stroking the sensitive skin below his eye. It made another wheezing sound, seemingly fascinated.

_Ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump_

A warning growl bubbled up from deep within his throat, the burning behind his eyes tripled as he stepped another foot forward, the dementor backing up several feet and recoiling.

**“I said, there is nothing here for you.”**

It wheezed again, bowing its head in apology before departing, the icy chill slowly vanishing as it moved further down the hall. Harry breathed out another cold breath, he hadn't felt a thing. Usually, dementors affected him heavily, but that was akin to speaking with… Death.

He turned, softly glowing eyes locking onto Theo’s prone form on the floor, he was the one that had passed out, but the others weren’t far behind. He glanced from each person in the compartment, taking in their current states and reactions to him carefully. Blaise seemed to be the best off, likely due to Loki’s interference. He seemed to have realized something, and was watching Harry carefully, the girls shoved behind his arm. Draco looked more pale than usual, and he had his gaze pinned to Harry with steely silver eyes, hands sizzling with heat. The girls looked mostly confused, trying to figure out what was happening. They all looked tired and scared.

Harry quickly realized he needed to do damage control. Turning fully, he addressed the room. “Not a word to anyone till I explain personally.”

Blaise stormed forward, “You piece of-”

“Blaise. Not now.” Draco drove a wedge between them, motioning aggressively to the prone form of Theo, still lying on the cold floor.

“What was that thing?” Tracy slid shakely into a seat, rubbing her arms to try and gain more warmth.

Harry sighed, crouching down and picking Theo up, placing him carefully across the opposite bench, “a dementor.”

Daphne turned to him sharply, “and you just, what, told it to leave?”

“Obviously.”

“-and how exactly is that physically possible?”

_Blast._

“Later, Greengrass.”

Her blue eyes narrowed, argument on the tip of her tongue. He held her gaze testingly, daring her to question him.

Her glare tripped, but she dropped the conversation for the time being. “Fine.”

* * *

**Five minutes prior:**

It was cold.

Theo shivered, rubbing his arms as he watched the window crystalize before his eyes.

It was _very_ cold.

“Everyone stay away from the door.” There was something about Harry's voice that had him standing as close to the window as possible, huddled up with the others in the compartment. Harry’s towering form stood guard in front of them, seemingly waiting for something. The air in the compartment was _freezing._

Theo felt it before he saw it. 

The icy chill seemed to penetrate his very being, and chains rattling distantly allerted him that something _very wrong_ was happening. Harry pulled out his wand as the huge shadow of… _something_ obscured their view of the hall. The handle started to shake, and Theo shook with it. He could hear his mother's voice, begging for mercy. She sounded far away. Someone shrieked, and he snapped his head up to see a long, boney hand move quietly into the room. 

Cold green eyes opened and peered at him mockingly from the shadows, and his mothers screaming rose in pitch, ears ringing as a woman's twisted laughter overrode his mothers pleas for mercy.

_“Revel in me, little prophet. Entertain me with your suffering.”_

He swayed, the twisted laughter of Fate ringing in his ears as his mother continued to sob.

_“Cry for me, you poor little thing.”_

Theo collapsed to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than they usually are I know but this chapter and the next were originally one big chapter that I decided to separate so I could add more details.


	44. Killer Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stress is evident as the group of third years come clean about a few secrets.  
> Remus is extremely confused.

Theo finally woke up with just a few minutes to spare before the train was set to arrive in Hogsmeade, exhausted and shaking. Harry pat him on the shoulder and handed him a bonbon-Tracey had revealed she had some in her trunk when he had asked for some chocolate. The others had mostly recovered from the dementors attack, and were now just watching him warily.

Except for Draco, who was much the same as always, which was a constant that relieved Harry of some of the pressure.

“What happened…?” Theo munched on the bonbon tiredly, sitting up slowly with Tracy’s help.

“A dementor showed up and tried to come in, but Harry just… told it to leave.” Daphne was standing next to Blaise, seemingly taking his side in the conflict. 

Theo nodded absentmindedly, “Makes sense, thanks mate.” He nodded to Harry, who was stifling a laugh.

“What do you mean it _makes sense?”_

Harry rolled his eyes at Blaise, annoyed with the teens aggression. Theo seemed to agree with him on that regard, and pulled himself up to a standing position, Tracey still fretting.

“Oh come on, if anyone was going to do something absurd, it would be him.” 

Daphne scoffed, and stormed out of the compartment in a huff. Blaise followed behind her, glaring at everyone all the while.

“Don't be bothered by him, he’s been locked up for the entire summer after all, he's just moody.” Draco was the voice of reason, somehow, and they all made their way out of the compartment after the newly dubbed ‘moody duo’.

The walk to the school was a quiet one as Harry and Theo talked about their classes and Draco subconsciously held onto Harry's sleeve.

“I've got Divination and Arithmancy, though I've heard that Divination is taught by a crackpot, so I'm not sure how useful it will be.”

Harry nodded along, “I've got Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, though I had wanted to do Care as well. Trelawny is supposedly a fraud, though I've heard she's had a few solid prophecies.”

Theo seemed intrigued with that, and started up on a long winded rant about how Switzerland was the only place that seemed to have a reputable divination sector, and why he had started learning to read German because of it.

“I don't see how you couldn't just find a reprint of the german texts, or use a translation charm.” Harry was arguing for the continued use of simple charms to meet his ends, Theo apparently wanted to do things the traditional way.

“Because I want to eventually live in Switzerland for a period, and I can't use translation charms on people constantly.”

“Sure you can!”

The argument was getting them nowhere.

As the group walked through the main gate, Harry sighed slightly as the familiar magic washed over him. The great hall was just as beautiful as it had been when he left in June, and the heat from various fireplaces and floating candles cradled him and soothed his mind.

He settled down on a bench at the slytherin table, Draco on his left and Theo to his right. Blaise was moping near Crabb and Goyle, while Daphne glared at him heatedly next to Tracy from across the table.

_Well isn't this just fantastic, you've done an excellent job cultivating relationships leech._

_Would you just fuck off?_

Harry wasn't in the mood for Tom’s bullshit, and he got progressively more irritable as the seconds drove on. He could feel the heat behind his eyes, his teeth grating uncomfortably and his fingers flexed. This was _not_ the day for this.

“Welcome to another wonderful year at Hogwarts!”

_Oh fuck off!_

“I am pleased to announce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor: Remus Lupin!”

The great hall erupted in applause as the graying man stood, waving sheepishly. Harry noticed the werewolf glancing with confusion at the Gryffindor table, seemingly looking for someone.

_Has he been living under a rock?_

Remus would have had to be out of the country to have missed the mild country-wide panic that came from his sorting; it was unfortunate for the man that no one had decided to inform him. 

Mentally shrugging, Harry turned to the rapidly appearing food, pilling all manner of meats onto his plate. Draco appeared similarly hungry, and the two ate ravenously (but politely, they weren't animals at the moment after all). Theo only picked at his food, obviously thinking very hard about something.

Tracey, apparently not wanting a tense atmosphere at dinner, decided to take it upon herself to throw a bread roll at him.

* * *

Remus glanced again towards the Gryffindor table, severely confused. He couldn't see anyone with the telltale Potter hair or bright green eyes-no one that could potentially be Harry.

Tentatively, he turned to the Ravenclaw table-Lily had always been unbelievably bright-but he also didn’t see anyone that matched the universally acknowledged features either. Growing concerned, he leaned over to his old head of house.

“Where’s Harry? Has something happened to him?” 

McGonagall glanced at him sternly, before pointing her fork to the… slytherin table.

“He's the tall, gangly looking one, around the middle of the lot.”

Whipping his head around, careful eyes combed the slytherin table, settling on a tall, skinny teen with a sharp haircut and mischievous green eyes. He was chewing something, raising an eyebrow at a brunette girl across from him, who had a bread roll in her hand and appeared about ready to throw it; a similar roll was laying on the table, and a boy to Harry’s right was glaring at it in distaste. Harry took a sip from a goblet and flipped her off, the people surrounding them breaking out in galls of laughter.

_...oh merlin._

Remus rubbed his face, confusion bleeding into mild horror as the boy grinned devilishly, flicking what looked like peas at the now screeching girl.

_He seems almost like… Sirius._

If Sirius was sorted into Slytherin, he corrected himself, watching as the boy laughed and nudged a smaller teen on his left who looked like a miniature Lucius Malfoy, a girl Remus could identify as a Greengrass scoffing at the two of them poshly.

“He...uhm,” Remus cleared his throat, ignoring Snape as the man smirked at him in amusement, “he’s different than I... expected.” He coughed, feeling uncomfortable suddenly.

McGonagall puffed up, “yes I was quite shocked too at first, but he is a model student. Top of his year across the board-a genius, I would say.”

Shocking the werewolf, Snape agreed with the woman's observations, complementing the teens impressive knowledge of potion ingredients and his natural skill in the practice. 

Remus felt quite suddenly that he was out of his element, and turned to look at the young Potter once more. He was partaking in a very mild mannered food fight, as the Malfoy look-alike stuffed a muffin down the lanky teens uniform collar.

“Is he doing well in your house, Severus?” Remus leaned over to the drowl man, who turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

“Flourishing, Lupin. So stop mothering him from a distance and eat your porridge.”

* * *

The walk to the common room was much cheerier than the walk to the castle, as Harry continued to shake muffin crumbs out of his uniform, cursing under his breath as his friends laughed. The introductions by the fifth year prefects was much the same as it had been the past two years, and quite suddenly the commons was void of firsties and the start of year house meeting had begun.

Word of the budding house alliance had spread apparently, as Gemma Farley had stepped up as Queen to round out her seventh year. Clearing her throat, Farley started on the pressing concerns of the house.

“Alright you lot, as Mariya Vaisey has aged out of the princess seat, our current prince has nominated one Daphne Greengrass for the position.” the girl rose, glancing smugly at a glowering Parkinson.

“All opposed?” no one raised their hand, “very well, Daphne Greengrass is the new slytherin princess.”

Farley made a note on a piece of parchment, “next order of business-”

“Wait a bloody moment!” a voice shouted out from the second years, and a wiry kid Harry could identify as Derrick Fingal stepped forward, looking to be on a warpath. The Fingal line wasn't known for anything in particular, but Derrick had proven himself to be quite the bigot, and had been quite vocal in his distaste of Harry.

“I want to challenge the half-blood for the prince title!”

He was also incredibly stupid, apparently.

Draco’s amusement wasn’t containable, and he snorted slightly on Harry’s left.

“Is he serious?” Theo set down his book with a look of interest on his face, curious about how this would all play out.

Farley raised an eyebrow, eyes darting between a trying-hard-not-to-laugh Harry and a red-with-rage Fingal, “...are you sure?”

He got notably brighter in color, “yes I'm bloody sure!”

The upper years started whispering among themselves, looking with slight worry at Harry, who was trying not to let the wendigo get too excited lest it wrangle control and make a big bloody mess of things.

_This ought to be fun, if anything._

“Alright, I accept.”

The whispers turned into excited muttering as Harry rose from his seat and sauntered to the large open area in the middle of the commons that was set aside for duels. This duel would have been an unwise decision on Fingal’s part if Harry had been a normal third year, but in this case it was practically suicide.

_Don't kill the brat, there might be an inquest._

_Duly noted._

Fingal met him in the circle, and Farley came up to officiate. Summoning a handkerchief, she held it aloft and started listing out the rules with a cautious tone.

“There will be no illegal spells cast, and if there is the caster will be automatically eliminated with the win going to the other duelist. The first to be disarmed and by extension unable to cast will be considered the loser. Ready?”

She let go of handkerchief, and the entire house watched with bated breath as it fell. Harry had his wand pointed assuredly at the younger boy's chest, hands steady. 

As the fabric brushed the floor, Harry sprang into action. 

There was an effectiveness to ending duels quickly, a necessary thing in wartime when your opponent wishes you moral peril. But in the case of pride and status it was widely acknowledged that you must humiliate your opposition to the best of your ability. This is why it was of no shock to the slytherin house when Harry whipped forward with deadly accuracy and landed a succession of prank jinxes on the boy-changing his hair, clothes, and skin to a dazzling array of colors. He threw in quite a few nasty ones as well, and Fingal was quickly vomiting slugs and spewing mealworms from his ears.

“You know Fingal, despite all your magical faults-being near squib and all-I'm sure there's someone deep inside you that would make a rather pleasant receptionist.”

Harry was mocking the boy now, sure, but the opportunity to humiliate a blood purist in the company of other blood purists didn’t come often, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth. The rest of the house laughed and jeered along with him too, which gave Harry blanket immunity from fault. A win-win really.

The second year was determined however, and through all the various jinxes managed to get a shot off, which was swatted away wordlessly by Harry, who shot a bat-bogey hex at the boy in return, stifling a yawn.

“Are you going to do something interesting, Fingal, or shall I end this for you?”

The second year didn’t reply quickly enough apparently, and with a firm expelliarmus, his wand came soaring into Harry’s outstretched palm.

“Fingal is unable to cast, Potter is the victor.” No one looked particularly shocked at Farley’s words, and some of them were still jeering at the loser, who was trying to pick himself off the floor. Harry cast the necessary counter curses with an eye roll, and threw the boy his wand back.

“Next time, challenge someone who’s actually on your level.”

* * *

The ragtag group of third year slytherins reconveined in the third year boys dorms, Tracy and Daphne looking around and pointing out the various differences between the girls and boys dorms. Blaise, never being one for subtlety, turned on Harry almost immediately.

“Alright Potter, spill.” Blaise was still wound tighter than a drum, and glared at Harry with distrust.

He rolled his eyes, “I need an unbreakable vow from those two before I say shit.” He motioned to the girls with a pointed look.

Daphne’s eyes got steely instantly, “what could possibly be so important that you need something like that?”

“Either you vow not to share with anyone what you hear after this or I obliviate you.”

A wand pointed at her head sped up her decision making, and the two girls quickly assured their silence. 

Waiting patiently for everyone to look at him, Harry ripped the bandaid off quite spectacularly.

“Me and Draco had creature inheritances over the summer.”

The dorm descended into chaos as Blaise leapt at Harry, intent on throttling the life out of him. Daphne turned on Draco and said something that must have been quite insulting as he also lunged at her. Tracey was gripping Theo’s arm asking what that meant, Theo was rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Throwing Blaise over his shoulder with a sigh, Harry moved to separate the two blonds wrestling on the floor, but was jumped on from behind, and stumbled forward.

_“Enough!”_

Everyone halted their movements, looking over to an erate Theo, who continued to rub his head as if he had a migraine.

“Blaise, you've been keeping it secret that you _pledged_ to a _god_ from Draco and I-yes I figured it out and no I'm not supportive of your decision-so you really have no reason to be pissed off at Harry for hiding his inheritance. Daphne, it's obvious that you and Draco have some sort of rivalry, but it is _extremely_ unclouth to use this as ammunition against him.”

Blaise slid off of Harry’s back, glowering but staying silent, the two blonds got up from the floor and brushed themselves off, pretending nothing had happened.

“Now if everyone would just settle down and _talk,_ I believe this could be a very informative conversation.”

Sufficiently cowed, the group arranged themselves in a circle, all looking at Harry expectantly.

He sighed, and started explaining. “My inheritance didn't come from my family, I'm pretty sure it's exclusive to me and won't be passed down the line. I don't know if I'm really comfortable saying what it is, because I don't want your view of me to be tarnished by the knowledge, as the creature isn’t something a member of polite society would consider redeemable.”

This caused ripples in the group, but Theo nodded and said he would respect Harry’s privacy.

“I don't like it, but you have the right to keep this private. It is a very personal matter, I won't press you.”

The others also seemed to want to press him for, but let him continue, “I will say that it is of demonic origins, and lives in colder weather-”

“This doesn't explain how you managed to shoo off a dementor.” Daphne cut him off, crossing her arms.

“That… is due to a few family heirlooms that I've come into contact with.'' Harry _really_ didn't want to explain the whole ‘master of death’ business to his friends. That seemed like a recipe for disaster.

She seemed ready to press him for details, but luckily Draco came to his rescue, “that's fine Harry, family heirlooms are private business.” the blond glanced at Daphne, obviously trying to one-up her. she glowered.

“I'm more interested in what this god pledging business with Blaise is.” Tracy’s voice cut through the silence, and all eyes turned to the fidgeting teen, who was rubbing a gloved hand nervously.

“It-uhm… its family related-”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh fuck off Potter!”

They descended into arguments once more, Blaise looking about ready to lunge at Harry again. Theo sighed with exasperation, this was going to take a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow half of my chapter titles are song titles now, I kinda dig it tbh.


	45. Green Eyes haunt You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first defense class leaves Theo shaken and Harry out for blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter than usual, but I didn't want to overshadow all the angst and feels with plotting.

Eventually Theo was able to wrangle the group into some sort of cohesive truce, though Blaise still seemed ready to throw down at any second. The next morning saw the third years eating breakfast and joking around as if nothing had happened, the drama of teenagedom coming and going like a windy day.

Blaise was still wound far too tight.

The group of third years made their way to Defense, Tracy going on about some sort of movie that she had watched over the summer, though Harry was the only one who actually understood the things she was saying. Draco was trying to follow along as well, but was mostly just guessing what the various muggle terms meant.

Harry stepped into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with trepidation. He had no idea what his boggart would be, and was a little nervous to find out. He was still very cautious with the wendigo, but after the first transformation it had calmed slightly, and was simply biding its time, so he found it doubtful that he would be afraid of it. Could it be Dumbledore? It was hard to tell really. Looking around the classroom, he spotted many posters of dangerous magical creatures and various illustrations of wand motions. Professor Lupin was standing awkwardly next to his desk, watching the students trickle in with a nervous smile. The man caught Harry’s eyes suddenly, and nodded to him with a slight wave, Harry grimaced in reply.

Settling down at a desk, Harry didn't bother to pull out his books, thinking back on more important matters as students continued to come in. He had quite a few things to focus on this year, and he was still aching from the transformation, so he needed to divide his time up effectively. For now, converting the Library of Secrets would be put on the backburner indefinitely; he had run some numbers, and with the 20,000+ books in the bloody thing, along with his rate of roughly thirty books translated a month, this was quickly turning into an unrealistic goal. He had gone back to the illegal stationary store in Knockturn (after getting the crystal skull shoved in his hands) and bought another infinite notebook to transfer all his necromancy books into. Harry was already planning on smuggling them out of the library at some point, since they were technically his anyway, but he also wanted a book to house them all in to have on the go. If he ever decided to continue transferring the books in the library to his book, it would have to be with a time dilation spell that had yet to be invented.

_Note to self: invent a time dilation spell._

The crystal skull and its fascinating silk cover was another thing that he would have to figure out at some point. The old crone had obviously had some sort of communion with the gods if she was so willing to literally throw it at him, which meant that it had to have some sort of function that would help him with the wendigo. He thought back to what she had said with a frown, she had known that he was a demon from the get go, which solidified her claim that the gods had some sort of role in the exchange.

_“Yes! It was such a great shock when the gods told me-” the batty old lady returned with something wrapped in deep purple silk, still chattering away, “-I almost didn't believe them! Harry Potter, a demon! Well, it was almost too much for my old heart to handle.” she shoved the silk covered thing into his arms, picking up his cloak and throwing his messily over him once more._

_“Now off you pop dearie, and keep her nice and clean. Shoo!”_

By simple deduction he could understand that she must have had some sort of vision or prophesy of some sort to be able to glean anything from the words of gods, which meant she was a seer in some capacity. She had also given pronouns to the skull, which was an odd thing to do considering it was a carving, perhaps the thing truly was possessed?

_She could have been talking about the silk._

Tom had a good point, though it raised the question of why exactly he would need a semi-sentent piece of fabric that insisted on covering a potentially cursed crystal skull, and if she did actually mean for the skull to help him in some way... why? What could it do for him?

He was shaken from his thoughts by Draco standing from his chair, the other students doing so as well. Following their example, Harry rose and fumbled for his wand-it seemed he would be finding out what his boggart was very soon.

It was a relatively quick walk to the staff room, and Snape met them there on his way out, sneering at Professor Lupin as he passed.

Standing in front of a large cabinet that was shaking slightly, Lupin began to explain. Harry zoned out though most of it, staring at the cabinet with curiosity. Harry felt Draco grip his left arm, and Theo ducked behind him as well. Apparently his friends felt he was the best thing to hide behind. 

Sighing, Harry got in line as Tracey added herself to the group hiding behind him. Harry wasn't expecting anything too spectacular, perhaps the horrid screeching of a wendigo or the lying eyes of Dumbledore, nothing that he couldn't get past. As the students each stepped forward to face their fear, Theo slowly inched out from behind him, his analytical side playing against his very reasonable fear. Gaining confidence, he moved ahead of Harry and to the side, trying to watch the proceedings from a better vantage point. Unfortunately, the boggart caught sight of him, and in an instant it shifted to reveal… Harry's eyebrows rose marginally, he _knew_ those eyes. Theo seemed to as well, and he stumbled backwards and onto his ass, fear evident in his eyes. 

“Mr. Nott? Is everything alright?” Lupin was being wholly unhelpful, and Theo continued to stare unblinkingly at a large pair of light green eyes as they held his gaze from the confines of the cabinet. Quite suddenly, a cruel-sounding laugh bubbled up from the darkness as well, and Harry’s thoughts were confirmed.

_Theo is afraid of Fate?_

_Honestly? I don't blame him, that woman is impossible._

_You've met her?_

_Unfortunately._

“R-ridiculous!” It wasn't working, Theo was far too afraid to be of much use. Sighing, Harry stepped in front of the boy, obscuring the boggart's line of sight. It turned the big green eyes on him, and transformed into…

Harry took a sharp breath in, staring unseeingly at a little boy in oversized, dirty clothes. A messy head of hair and bright green eyes hidden behind thick, circular glasses. The boy was roughly nine years old, though it was hard to tell because he was so small. He had a nasty scratch on his knee, dirt and pavement sticking to the tender skin. His feet were bare and covered in scratches, dirt and mud caking them as if he had been running from someone without shoes on. He looked up nervously at Harry, fidgeting with his too large shirt. There was a large bruise on his cheek.

“H-hello sir.”

**Weakness.**

Searing hot anger flooded through him and Harry clenched his hand into a fist around his wand, overwhelmingly wanting to _destroy_ the creature in front of him.

 _“Ridiculousss.”_ His tone was venomous and cold, tipping into parseltongue slightly as his anger became palpable in the air. His face betrayed nothing but disgust and hatred, cold fury obvious as he thrust the elder wand forward and obliterated the boggart where it stood, no laughter needed.

**I am not that child anymore, and I never will be again.**

“Ah… are you alright, Mr. Potter?” Harry glared at the Professor heatedly before turning and storming out of the room, deciding right then that if he was in there for one more moment he would let go and kill everyone. Draco followed closely behind him, whispering platitudes quietly.

* * *

**15 Minutes Earlier:**

Theo was nervous about going up against his greatest fear, mostly because he was absolutely positive of what it would be-the dementor was enough for him, thank-you-very-much. Peaking at Harry, who looked _bored_ of all things, Theo snuck behind the tall boy, hoping to stay out of the boggart's line of sight. Draco seemed to have the same idea, and Tracy quickly followed behind them.

 _“This is utterly ridiculous, why are we being forced to face our greatest fear in front of the class?”_ Tracey whispered to him quietly, occasionally peering out from behind Harry to watch the proceedings. 

_“It's tactless really, who does this new professor think he is?”_ Draco replied to her before Theo could, and the two quickly started up a hushed conversation about how unfair this all was. Theo peeked out behind his gargantuan friend to watch the other students face their fears with an interesting array of tactics. Moving out slightly, Theo watched Goyle turn the muggle lawnmower into a vase, which was apparently hysterical to the boy; the vase turned into an inferni as it turned on Parkinson, who shrieked. 

Moving to get a better view, Theo was startled when the inferni caught sight of him and turned into-

_Oh merlin._

He stumbled, falling backwards as the memories of both his dream form the past year and the still fresh dementor attack bubbled up to the surface.

_“Revel in me, little prophet. Entertain me with your suffering.”_

_Green eyes lit up in the darkness, a pale green_ **_very_ ** _unlike Harry’s. These eyes were cold, cold and twisted and cruel and sadistic._

_The eyes of Fate watched him with glee._

_“Cry for me, you poor little thing.”_

_He was forced to comply, being suddenly ripped to pieces by unimaginable pain. His eyes were burning, his back was splitting open, snakes were coiling up his arms and knotting around his soul, he could feel his skull trying to split in half._

**_It hurt so much that he couldn't even be sure that he existed anymore._ **

_He screamed, living and feeling and experiencing and_ **_reveling_ ** _in the destructive power of Fate as she forced him to bear witness to her handiwork._

_“We were doomed from the start.”_

_Was that his voice? Was he the one speaking now? The pain was unimaginable, and the woman was laughing uproariously as he continued to scream. He couldn’t comprehend who he was anymore, the agony filing up every crevice of his soul, swallowing him up and forcing him down. Was this the cruciatus curse? Was this the burning agony of hell?_

_“Take hold of this pain, little prophet, it will guide you to greatness.”_

“R-ridiculous!”

He was trying, trying _so_ hard to ignore those cold green eyes and the promises they held, the pain they wrought. Tried to muster up anything that could possibly make this situation funny in the slightest. He couldn't, he just couldn't. 

Long legs obscured his view of the eyes and Tracey grabbed him around the arm and hauled him to his feet, steading him with a hand.

“You alright there Theo?”

Shaking his head slightly, Theo let himself be led over to his friends, who were watching Harry with worry for some reason. Turning slightly, he caught sight of a small little boy with horrid clothes and big green… he halted, eyes widening.

_Is that-is that Harry as a child?_

He couldn't observe the little boy further, as the aforementioned teen viciously cut his wand down and obliterated the boggart in one go, no laughter needed-just pure fury.

Theo backed up slightly, he had _never_ seen Harry that mad before, something was horribly wrong about this situation. 

“Ah… are you alright, Mr. Potter?” Harry turned the anger towards the Professor, and Theo thought for a horrible moment that Harry might actually attack the man, before (to Theo's relief) he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, very obviously skipping the rest of class. Theo watched Draco hurry after him wordlessly, already trying to piece together this puzzle.

“Theo, are you sure you're alright?” He turned to Tracey, empty assurances on his lips.

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

She gave him a look that said that she didn't believe a word that he said, and he cursed her impressive lie-spotting abilities.

“Fine. I'm quite shaken about it truthfully, but I'm not talking about it right now.” She nodded sympathetically, stern features melting away instantly. Glancing behind her, Theo caught Blaise’s eyes, the boy gave him an irritated look, as if this was another secret that he had been hiding...wait-

Sighing, Theo rubbed his face, exhausted.

* * *

Harry stormed down the hall, mostly ignoring Draco as he stumbled over his words.

“-I mean it's perfectly reasonable to not like who you were as a child-uh, I mean I was an awfully ugly baby you know-but don’t tell Theo that he’ll probably owl my mother for photographic evidence and ruin my reputation. Uh, but hey right-um really there's nothing wrong about it you know, even if your fashion sense was rather-uh, well Harry it was awful honestly but-”

“Draco.”

They stopped, Draco fidgeting slightly as Harry gazed down at him carefully.

“You'll always be in my corner, right?” 

“Of course.”

A forest fire during winter, that's what they were together. “I’m afraid of being weak, Draco.”

The shorter boy’s eyes widened with understanding and Harry sighed slightly, rubbing his cheek.

“I-that version of me has never existed, but the idea of it angers me I-I don't like it.”

“I understand Harry.”

_You don't though, do you._

Because that version of him didn't exist in this timeline yes, but it _had_ been his reality for the majority of his first life, and the aftershocks of that shame still haunted him, apparently. He couldn't tell Draco all that though, there was a line between secrets that could be shared and ones that never left the confines of his mind. That's why he couldn't talk about being master of death, because his past time travel was fundamentally intertwined with his past life, regardless of if he wanted it to be or not.

The boggart was affecting him more than he could have ever expected it to, and Harry was completely out of his element in how to deal with it. 

“I don't know what to do. I feel like I need to break something.”

“Let's go find you something to destroy then.”

Draco grabbed his hand and started determinalty dragging Harry along to some unknown destination. Harry marveled at their intertwined hands, feeling complete as the other boy's naturally warm hands clashed with his naturally cold ones.

Winter and fire, ice and heat. Polar opposites intertwined in harmony.

**I'll always be in your corner.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going on vacation for the next 5 days and will have shoddy internet so updates might be late or just not happen, it really depends on the gods at this point.


	46. Basket Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Classes pass by slowly as Harry dodges well meaning potential father figures and tries to reconnect with his friends. However, a letter from a certain alchemist disrupts the uneven tightrope he had been walking, as well as everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few readers: "(insert character here) is pissing me off!! Why are they doing (insert action)????"  
> Me: "...........they're 13 and traumatized?"  
> (this isn't me complaining or anything, but like I'm trying to make realistic characters here, and I'm sure a lot of you were or are currently 13. That shit isn't easy, and just gets worse when you add magic and trauma (Blaise was literally imprisoned in his own bedroom for over a month, cut the kid some slack, jesus))

Harry and Draco skipped classes till lunch, deciding instead to chuck rocks into the Black Lake (this wasn't technically destroying things like they had initially planned, but it was the only thing to do that wouldn’t get them expelled and they both got a good arm workout from it). Entering the great hall for lunch, they were met with a worried Tracy and Theo, who proceeded to gang up and pester them about why they had skipped, if they were ok, and why they thought it was a good idea to potentially piss off the new Defense professor.

“First of all,” Harry started, pilling mashed potatoes onto his plate as he spoke, “that entire lesson was a load of shite, and I think the entire thing should have been optional. Secondly, I’m extremely annoyed with Lupin and that stupid boggart, thank you for asking, and finally-” he slapped Parkinsons hand away from the steaks to grab one, “Lupin can eat my ass for all I care, he kept looking at me as if he wanted to anyhow.”

That all was true, Harry remembered Remus from his last life and the man had been kind but distant, and _really_ obsessed with the whole being a werewolf business. He had tried to fight Tonks every step of their relationship because of it, and honestly, Harry didn't have room in his cold shriveled heart for that man's angst and self obsession. Because that was what it was really, self obsession, Lupin made no effort to understand that Tonks loved him till nearly the day they died, it was depressing for the both of them.

Theo seemed scandalized by the thought of blatantly disrespecting a teacher, though he obviously agreed with Harry’s reasoning, Tracy was itching for drama.

“Well if you do try to sass him, be sure that I'm in the vicinity to hear it.”

Harry rolled his eyes at her and took a bite of his steak, “only if you stop asking to wear my jacket.”

The ensuing argument was so chalk full of muggle slang that no one else in slytherin could possibly follow what was being discussed.

* * *

Remus sighed, closing the door to his quarters quietly. It had been a very taxing day of teaching for him, and after Harry had stormed out it had only gotten worse. He had been unable to focus on his classes after seeing the boy’s boggart, trying to make sense of it. Sitting down tiredly at his desk, he thought back to the conversation he had had with Snape during dinner.

_“Pardon me, but do you happen to know anything of Harry-sorry, Mr. Potter’s homelife?” Snape peered over at him with thinly veiled annoyance._

_“That’s personal information Lupin, mind your business.”_

_Wincing slightly, he tried again, “it's just that Mr. Potter had a rather peculiar boggart that made me worry that he might not be taken the best care of-”_

_“He lives with Lily’s sister if you're truly that concerned, though all evidence points to him living quite happily with her and her family, considering that he goes home every Yule. So if you would stop butting into a student's personal life, I’m sure everyone would appreciate it.”_

_That wasn't all that promising, Remus had met Petunia-only once, at the wedding-and she had seemed like a horrible woman. He couldn't see Harry flourishing in the sort of atmosphere that Petunia would create.”_

_“Are you quite certain? I’ve met Petunia and she never seemed to be quite the-”_

_“I grew up with her Lupin, in case you have forgotten. If you truly must know I had indeed had doubts about her parenting abilities at first, but the boy has proven time and time again to be quite happy in her home, so she has obviously changed for the better. Now if you are quite finished, I would like to eat my quiche in peace.”_

Remus still wasn't quite convinced that Snape knew what he was talking about, the man had gone head to head with James for years after all, there was no way that he didn't have some leftover resentment for the Potter line. That, of course, meant that Harry needed help and wasn't getting it from his head of house. Now that he was thinking about it, Remus could also attribute the teens aggressive attitude to living in a bad environment-his family had sure made Sirius angry at the other marauders on several occasions.

Shuffling through some papers tiredly, Remus pulled out a blank piece of parchment and started writing a quick letter out to the boy, perhaps they could have a conversation over tea?

* * *

Days passed, and Harry was on his way to his first Ancient Runes class, which he shared with Blaise. The other boy had gotten notably less tense as the days went by, but was still wound up quite a bit. They walked quietly to the classroom, having nothing to talk about that wouldn’t potentially cause an explosive argument.

“I'm trying to make a rune scheme to protect my muggle devices from magic, any ideas?” 

That did the trick, and the boys launched into a heated debate over the inter-complexities of protection runes and how they might interfere with dodgy things like electronics. Harry soon realized that they both would likely find the runes class rather boring, as Blasie could already probably get an O on the Runes OWL. He told the other boy that, and observed passively as he became extremely insulted.

“What, don't think I could manage the NEWT?”

“Oh! I’m sorry, have you created your own rune scheme?”

“Have you?”

“Naturally.”

“Bloody-gifted bastard.”

Tom had insisted that he learn how to draw runes the second his hands were physically able to hold a pencil, and it had been an upward battle for a few years as his motor functions continued to develop, but Harry had eventually gotten quite adept in the practice. Though, since you could only do self study under very specific circumstances, Harry had been forced to take the class anyway, at least for the year till he could test out. Blaise had been studying runes for the majority of the last year for his pledge, and since he had to understand the obnoxiously ornate runes scheme to be able to use it; he had done a lot of studying of runes and their alphabets, as well as a considerable amount of theory-and that was only the studying that Harry knew about, there was no telling what he had been doing over the summer.

Ancient Runes had potential to be an interesting history lesson for them, and Professor Babbling was well known for being quite ingenious, perhaps Harry could approach her for an apprenticeship and learn a few things.

Walking into the classroom, Harry observed the area with interest. He had never been in the room in his last life, and it had an interesting layout he didn't see in the rest of the school. The entire wall behind the teacher's desk was one big chalkboard, and the desks were set up in crescent moons branching out from the front. All the other walls were covered floor to ceiling in bookshelves, which were in turn stacked to the brim with various books. It was quite large, but felt a tad cramped from all the space taken up.

He settled down at a desk, still looking around with interest, the chalkboard was empty at the moment, though that could change in a heartbeat. Blaise was next to him, already jolting down runes from various alphabets-as if he didn't already have them memorized.

“Trying to take my crown as universal teacher's pet, eh Zabini?” Blaise glared at him, it lacked heat. 

“I'm not gonna compete with you and Granger for that spot.” 

“Oh come on mate, you can hardly consider her whining to be ‘competing’ with me.”

Snickering, the two boys turned back to gathering up their stationary. Harry knew that Granger had to have the time turner this time around as well, though he had no intention of letting her keep it. Sure, stealing the thing from the girl was risky, but stealing from the ministry or-god forbid-trying to find a stable one on the black market, was much worse. He could handle one sleep deprived third year with a superiority complex, especially since said third year still had the irrationality curse on her.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Granger rocked into the classroom just before the bell rang, looking like a dumpster fire. The responsibility of using a time turner obviously wasn't one that she could cope with, as from the looks of things she wasn't using it to catch up on sleep.

To be blunt, the girl looked an utter mess.

Harry watched her carefully, it would be much easier to steal the time turner from her if she continued being such a wreck, but he didn't doubt that she would eventually get the hang of all the time traveling, and by extension get better with her sleep schedule. Best to act fast before that happened.

The slam of a door allerted Harry to the professor arriving, and he turned quickly to face the front. He paid a relative amount of attention to the woman as to gauge what they would be learning for the year, but didn’t think that it would be anything he couldn't handle.

“Good morning class!” Professor Babbling was a cheery woman who appeared to be roughly into her forties, though that could mean anything for her actual age, as magical people tended to age depending on a wide array of factors. It was mostly based on genes though, as someone who was born to a particularly… well, to an inbred family like the Gaunts or Blacks would age much the same as a muggle, and someone who had a good amount of variety in their ancestry could live up to two hundred years if they stayed reasonably healthy. Harry could only assume that he was on that track, if not for his parentage than his immunity to disease and injury due to being Master of Death.

“This year will be an introductory course to runes and the main three alphabets, which are the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Greek alphabets.” Harry was already adept in those three, and from the smirk on Blaise’s face, so was he.

“If any of you reach NEWT level Ancient Runes, you can also look forward to learning the Phoenician alphabet, which is far more complex.”

This made the young Potter pause, Tom hadn't taught him the Phoenician alphabet, as it was native to the Mediterranean and not often used outside of the region.

“Do you know that one?” Harry leaned over and whispered to Blaise. The boy was Italian after all.

“What, you don't?”

_Prat._

Harry didn't find the rest of the class all that compelling, and he told Blaise so once they finally left.

“Honestly? I think I'll spend most days working on my own projects, I can hardly consider going over the alphabets repeatedly a good waste of my time.”

Blaise looked ready to agree with him before they were interrupted. “Honestly Potter, why would you take Ancient Runes if you don't even want to learn runes!” Granger didn't know how to mind her own business, typical.

Turning around to glare halfheartedly at the girl, he didn't bother with an explanation. “Eavesdropping are we, Granger?”

She turned pink, and adjusted her overflowing satchel with a huff, “I'm simply pointing out how you shouldn't take a class if you aren't interested in the material.”

Harry was in a bit of a tricky position, because on one end he really wanted to just tell of the girl and explain how he had a private tutor, but she would no doubt tell Dumbledore, who would then become suspicious of him; but Harry also had pride, and there was no way he would walk away from this without verbally decking the girl.

“If you must know Granger, I've already learned those three alphabets. If you weren't so busy babysitting Weasley, you might have the time to do so as well.” 

There, not only was he digging on her ability to study, but the jab might even drive a rift between the two Gryffindors.

“Come on then Blaise, I have better things to do than squabble in an empty hallway.”

They left the girl fuming in the corridor, hurrying off to their next class.

* * *

**Hadrian,**

**I hope this letter reaches you well. It is my understanding that you wished to learn more about my stone? Well, I can hardly consider occasional letters to be a viable way to inform someone of such a delicate object, so I have a proposition for you. You see, the stone is a finicky thing, and can only be used under very specific circumstances-circumstances that have yet to be revealed to anyone but my wife, funnily enough. While I am aware that you are currently a student and not yet gifted with long stretches of time to squander away in a lab, I find it prudent to request that if you are interested in learning how to use the stone, you allow me to teach you face to face, perhaps over one of your summer vacations?**

**I mean not to say that I am in any way wishing to depart from the living world and gift the stone to you, because I fully intend to see the universe out to its completion, but if you find the idea of immortality interesting in any respect, I would consider a descendant of the Peverel line a man best suited for the knowledge of how to create and use the stone.**

**In any case, I do not wish to push you to make a decision, but I urge you to at least let me apprentice you in an informal manner.**

**Your friend, Nicolas.**

Harry reread the letter for what felt like the twelfth time, still not fully believing it. Nicolas Flamel-the world renowned alchemist Nicolas Flamel, was offering to teach him how to make a _bloody philosopher stone._

Tom was having a temper tantrum in his head.

_Fifty years! I spent fifty bloody years trying to find a way to become immortal and this french bastard just plops the solution right into your lap!_

In his defense, it was a reasonable thing to have a temper tantrum over, considering the circumstances.

_Should I take him up on the offer?_

_Should you-are you bloody kidding me? If you don't I'll kill you twice over!_

It was a once in two lifetimes opportunity really, and Harry would be phenomenally stupid not to take it-the elixir of life was a good enough reason to do so. He sat back in his chair and thought carefully, while he could certainly make a case to his aunt about receiving lessons from the man each summer, she would no doubt insist that he stay at home for at least a month before going galavanting off to France, if she even agreed in the first place. Harry wouldn't be able to convince her this summer, he was sure of that, and who knew what nonsense the wizarding world would cook up the next summer to make his life infinitely harder.

Puffing up his cheeks in frustration, Harry quickly started writing out the potential upsets the next four years would lead him to, needing a visual to get a better picture of things.

**Summer after third year: Quidditch world cup-Draco might force me to go, and the death eaters will likely attack during that time.**

**Fourth Year: triwizard tournament-won't compete since Tom isn’t being a bother, Pettigrew won't survive this year anyways.**

**Summer after fourth year: ...Umbridge? (note: dementors are a minor nuisance at best, don't bother with Umbitch unless she bothers you).**

**Fifth year: Potentially umbridge as defense teacher (might need to murder), Dumbledore trying something(?)**

**Summer after fifth year: ????**

Harry looked down at his chicken scratch distastefully. So much of his knowledge of events after fourth year depended completely on Voldemort being an issue, so he couldn’t effectively foresee what was going to happen after that date now that Tom was on his side. It was likely that he could start on with Nicolas the summer after fourth year, but it was doubtful he could weasel anything sooner than that out of his aunt.

Harry glared down at the unhelpful parchment, liking to think that his indecision was all its fault. When it continued to sit there like an inanimate object and not apologize or anything, Harry tossed it aside and grabbed for the two other letters he had needed to read that night. Turning the first one over in his hands, Harry groaned slightly at the name of the sender. He still (albeit begrudgingly) ripped the letter open and read its contents.

**Mr. Potter,**

**I would like to first apologize for not introducing myself to you personally, as me and your father were good friends. I would like very much to get to know you over a cup of tea to discuss how you have been in my absence. If you find this a pleasant idea, I would be happy to see you next Sunday over brunch.**

**Professor Remus Lupin.**

Harry was _extremely_ unenthusiastic about meeting with Remus for anything but school related happenings, but doubted he would be able to get out of it without seeming suspicious to Dumbledore.

Cursing slightly, Harry penned out a quick reply and handed it off to Hades with a grimace, turning to the other letter. The name of the sender on this one made him smile a bit.

**Heir of Slytherin,**

**Good evening your grace! Or morning, I'm not awfully picky. I wish you good tidings and hope that my letter greets you in good health (is that what you say to fancy heirs? I’ve yet to speak to a particularly fancy heir yet so I apologize most sincerely if I've insulted your fancy graceness). I had the most wonderful dream last night, and as we have yet to speak outside of my dreams, and I feel it is unlikely that you remember those dream conversations, so I feel that you simply must hear about it.**

**If I have not done something horribly rude and insulted your heirness, I do ever so hope that you will break school rules and meet me in the astronomy tower tonight.**

**Luna Lovegood**

_...What._

_Welcome to existing in Luna Lovegood’s sphere of influence, Tom._

Harry was happy that Luna had reached out, though it concerned him slightly that she seemed to be dreaming about him. Penning out a quick letter of confirmation that he will indeed bring a fork, he set it aside for Hades to nab once he returned.

Reaching for Nicolas’ letter again, Harry started reading over it once more, still feeling undecided about what his response could be.

_Decisions decisions._

* * *

Harry found it quite funny that all of Theo’s elective courses were divination related, though Arithmancy was a type of divination that Harry could get behind far easier than Trelawney’s nonsense.

When Tom had first started explaining arithmancy to him, it had seemed like a load of rubbish as well-and honestly, the magical properties of numbers? Was he really that unreasonable by thinking it was hogwash? Regardless of his initial warryness of the practice, he was pleasantly surprised when it ended up being very logical and methodical. As well as obnoxiously ornate-he couldn't make heads or tails of the OWL level equations when Tom had first had him write them down, though he eventually figured them out. Arithmancy was still his weakest subject at the moment, and Tom grumbled occasionally that he would likely only get an A or EE on the NEWT if he took it (and considering that he had been studying all of Tom’s knowledge of the subject for the first eleven years of his second life, he wasn't likely to get much better at it, unless Professor Vector was a better teacher than whomever had taught Tom).

Turning to Theo, who was fidgeting with the corner of a piece of parchment, Harry contemplated the boy’s predicament. The Nott heir had been practically _forced_ into the profession of seer the second his inner eye had opened, and that position was confirmed further when his grandfather took him to St. Mungos to have his eye treated, which made his abilities public. Theo would be able to be the Nott Lord yes, but society would expect him to study divination and practice it for the upper crust. That was the fate of every realized seer of noble blood in Britain, as the stuffy rich people of the world would much rather go to another stuffy rich person to get their future realized than some crackpot living in a hut. It was rather sad for Theo really, and Harry was once again thankful that he had given the other boy the option to study elemental magic-Theo would need a skill of his that he could consider his own choice in the coming years as the pressure of society's expectations pressed down on him.

“-supposedly Professor Vector is very good with numbers, and hates Trelawney with a passion, which makes her at least of average intelligence-” Theo had been nervously listing off everything he knew of the teacher, and as Harry zoned back in on the conversation he was able to add anecdotes of his own.

“She seems rather bonkers in her own way though, I heard she's stricter than McGonagall.” This was apparently not the right thing to say to the already stressed boy, as Theo immediately removed himself from the conversation to start mumbling out all the mathematical equations he knew.

“Good evening class.”

Jumping slightly, Harry whipped around to the front, where Professor Vector had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Theo had nearly jumped out of his skin, and Harry made a mental note to talk with the boy and see why he was so jittery today.

Harry had never been particularly in love with mathematics as a subject, though he had been rather good at maths in his first life, and Tom’s aggressive teaching had only elevated that. He quickly came to realize that Professor Vector was, in fact, madly in love with the science, as she passionately ranted on about probability and numerology and advanced theorems that they would most certainly NOT be learning until they were in NEWT-level advanced arithmancy because right now they were ‘far too foolish to use the knowledge effectively’, as if they would even be able to understand said knowledge.

_I like her._

_You would, wouldn't you._

Putting Tom’s newfound crush aside, Harry was comfortable in considering his relative ease with the subject till sixth year, but listened properly anyway as to gleam any extra tidbits of knowledge that the mathematician might drop in her lengthening rant.

Theo was scribbling furiously onto a parchment, seemingly fascinated with the woman's lecture.

_There's hope for us yet._

* * *

Draco slouched further into the tree he was leaning on, glaring at all the Gryffindors as they pet and bowed to the hippogriffs as ’Professor’ Hagrid looked on with pride. The slytherins in the class had all opted to watch, not wanting to get shredded to bits-that's what Daphne had said at least. Truthfully, Draco wanted to interact with the winged beasts, and his inner veela was whispering about how wonderful it would be to fly with them. 

He shifted, making sure not to lean his back onto the tree. He had gotten used to his wings being trapped under the constrictive fabric, but wanted to be able to retract them as soon as physically possible. 

Draco glowered as Weasley was thrown onto the back of one of the hippogriffs and quickly carted off into the sky, yelling with glee all the while.

_Fly now, please?_

_I can't, go back to sleep._

A plus about his inheritance was that the veela actually listened to him, though it was rather miffed about the constant sleeping, and Draco was sure that eventually it would force him out after curfew to fly.

Weasley touched down on the back of the hippogriff with a whoop, and Draco’s scowl deepened. He was NOT jealous of Weasley, his animal instincts were just fighting against his common sense, that's all.

Not even the simple mind of his veela bought that lie.

Sighing deeply, Draco betrayed his pride and drew off of the tree and stalked closer to one of the nearest hippogriffs. Catching its eye, he fell into a deep bow-one that his father would be proud of. The class went quiet as the winged beast bowed just as deeply, not one to be outdone. 

Deeming it safe, Draco practically floated to the animal, feeling some sort of indescribable relief by fighting against the norm. Stroking along the hippogriffs soft feathers, he whispered platitudes to the magnificent creature, comparing their wings and assuring her that he would bring some preening equipment to the next class to properly pamper her.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye, Draco smirked at the shocked (and indignant, in Weasley’s case) faces that watched him.

_I can't wait to tell Harry, he’d laugh his ass off._

While the blond boy continued to get on swimmingly with his winged friend, Hagrid didn't come over to offer him a ride, so Draco spent the rest of the class stroking her feathers with a small smile, pretending that the other slytherins weren’t also spreading out to partake in a relatively dangerous activity.

* * *

That night, after everyone who didn't have secret conversations in towers scheduled was fast asleep, a tall boy slipped out of the Slytherin common room under his invisibility cloak, an annoyed snake in hand. Harry had no idea what to expect of this meeting, and wasn't sure he would be able to properly guess, as Luna always carried an air of absurdity that was hard to comprehend, much less plan for.

Setting Thasin down to go do whatever snake thing she had been insistent on doing that night, Harry started on his way out of the dungeons, intent on getting to the tower before Luna did. Turning a corner, Harry caught a glimpse of dirty blonde hair, and quickly followed after the petite girl. He followed Luna all the way up the astronomy tower, and watched with slight trepidation as she sat down on the edge of the towers lookout, legs dangling off the edge and humming softly. Harry continued to watch her, calculating gaze trying to sort her out. Luna was a wild card on the best of the times, and he couldn't depend on her to make this a normal meeting. The dreams that she had written about worried him as well, what exactly did she know?

The humming continued, and he remembered a terrified father handing him and his friends over to snatchers for just a hint of proof that his daughter was alive. How long had Luna been trapped in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor? Was it weeks, or maybe even months?

The invisibility cloak fell from his shoulders, pooling at his feet as if made of liquid stars.

“Hello Harry.”

“Hello Luna.”

None of this situation made sense, she wasn't supposed to remember, _why does she remember._ The intense anger of seeing his boggart bubbled up again, this time with a hit of something utterly nauseating.

**Shame.**

“I’ve been having strange dreams, Harry.” 

He was fracturing, pulling apart at the seams to reveal that scared little boy locked inside a cupboard. He hasn't changed, never would. The realization came bearing down on him like a sack of bricks, and Harry was forced to confront himself-his true self-for the first time.

“At first I thought they were just that, dreams.” He was being peeled apart like layers of an onion, he was Heir Hadrian James Potter, proud slytherin with a heart of ice. No, he was just Harry, an orphan who saved the world. Except… that wasn't true either, was it. He was a scared little boy, just a creepy little freak with an ugly scar. 

The layers flaked off till the emotional armor had been swept away with the wind, and all that was left was the angry, desperate shell of someone who could have been incredible. An ugly little thing fighting furiously to become something-to become something that could one day be considered a cheap imitation of what he should have been. Trying to right the wrongs that had torn him asunder in the first place. What was the point if no one else even remembered what had been done to him?

“But I realized a few months ago what they really were.”

Harry's mind fractured, his first and second lives separating and tearing, the rift between them stronger than ever.

_Who am I. Who was I. Who should I have been?_

“They were memories of a future that is no longer going to happen.” Luna knew. She knew of the **weakness** he showed in his first life, she knew that she had rotted away in Malfoy Manor for months on end while he fought in a war that should have never happened, she knew he was **weak** , that he had failed.

“I’m different now.”

His voice came out rough, almost pleading. _Please, please I promise to be better this time. I'm not weak anymore. I'm not._

“We all are Harry, but that doesn't change the memories.”

He collapsed next to her, walls that kept the emotions at bay collapsing with him as everything bore down full force. The anger from seeing his boggart fell away and revealed the anguish it had been hiding.

**Weakness.**

**Fear.**

**Cowardice.**

“I asked you to come up here because I had a good dream yesterday night.” 

He looked at her, really looked at her. Luna was bright eyed and excited, her eyes betraying none of the pity she must be feeling for him. Her words had been so quiet and calm but she had been smiling all the while as his mind imploded.

“Do you want to hear about it?”

All he could do was nod, and she started describing a world where people weren't forced into boxes of light or dark, where a person would be judged based on their character instead of their ancestry, or wealth, or magic. She spoke of a world that was free of horribly corrupt governments that didn't care about their people, spoke of countries that thrived on innovation and discovery. Spoke of happiness and wonder and a world where people could simply exist, could simply live.

It was an unrealistic dream, full of ideologic concepts and utopian societies, but it was very, _very_ nice.

It made him wonder how close humanity could get to that dream.

How long would it take to fix the world?

_“Far longer than two hundred years”_ was the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter cuz I had twice as long to write than I usually give myself (╯▽╰ )  
> Luna and Nicolas Flamel will both have larger parts to play in this book and this chapter featured a sneak peak into that. I want to go on record that Luna doesn't know nearly as much as Harry thinks she does, Fate makes sure she only remembers just the barest of details, but she's a smart cookie and understands enough to comfort Harry.


	47. Passing the Torch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry gives some good (but not well received) advice.  
> Theo returns to his roots, and finds potential company among the dust.  
> Blaise's shackles tighten.

Harry was in what Tom called his ‘scheming funk’ for the rest of the week, thinking over his conversation with Luna and the letter from Nicolas that was still going unanswered. Luna’s dream opened up a lot of previously ignored avenues (on the basis that plans stemming from those ideas would take far longer than he could reasonably live) and the promise of immortality that followed with the knowledge of how to make a philosopher's stone had catapulted those ideas from far fetched to completely plausible. Due to all of this, Harry had been forced to rethink his previous plans for the next four years, and took considerable time to contemplate the decades and centuries after that. 

To be rather blunt, Harry was in the throes of a complete reevaluation of his entire future, and all because he refused to pay attention to his feelings surrounding what Tom had dubbed ‘the Luna incident’. Of course, Harry was open to the idea of accepting his last life and how it had affected him, just not for another few decades or before he was legally able to get utterly and completely smashed. Till that eventual time though, he would focus on reworking his plans and making new contingencies. Truthfully, Harry wasn't quite sure if he would be able to pull it all off all on his lonesome, which made the possibility of bringing his friends in on it another likely necessity-which by extension prompted a heated debate with Tom over the morality of child soldiers.

In short, Harry was quite mentally compromised by the time Sunday rolled around and he was expected to visit with Lupin over tea-something that he was already quite unenthusiastic for-so the result of the encounter was bound to be negative for at least one party.

Harry dragged his feet on the way up to the Defense classroom, apprehension and annoyance building as he got closer and closer to his destination.

_I never should have agreed to this, why didn’t you stop me?_

_Just grin and bear it Leech, how annoying can one man be._

Harry grimaced, reaching the familiar door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. He moved silently into the room, and made his way quietly up the steps and to the office’s foreboding door. Sighing, Harry steeled his nerves and stepped forward, knocking twice (firm, but not too friendly-a professional nock for a work environment), already regretting ever bothering with this. A quiet ‘come in!’ granted him entrance, and Harry creaked open the door and stepped gingerly inside. Lupin was busying himself with tea of some sort, and Harry designated not to drink a single sip. The office looked much the same as it had in his last life, and Harry stood awkwardly at the door-not wanting to come in further without prompting from the man.

He sniffed slightly as he caught the distinct smell of dog permeating the air slightly-not enough for a normal human to pick up on, but he certainly could. His wendigo seemed to rear its head up and contemplate the smell for a moment, before settling back down again, dismissing it as a non-threat. Harry could only assume that what he was picking up on was the werewolf side of Lupin, which would explain why it seemed so...weak. A werewolf wouldn't give the gluttonous demon too much trouble on a _good_ day, but Moony was skin and bones from obvious neglect and avoidance from his human half-he would probably be taken down by a particularly dedicated dog, much less one of the most efficient predators known to the magical world.

_Well that answers one question._

Harry couldn't exactly call the man on his werewolf abuse to his face-despite how much he really wanted to-and opted to tell Sirius about it if he ever managed to meet the man in human form. Remus could learn a thing or two about ‘embracing the wolf’ from Sirius, Harry surmised.

“Oh! Please, do come in.” Remus had finally realized he hadn't sat down, and shepherded a reluctant Harry into a chair facing a worn out desk. Settling himself into the plush seating, Harry watched the nervous man dart around the place with a steely gaze, ignoring the tea that had been placed in front of him.

Lupin eventually managed to stop busying himself about the place and finally settled down in the seat opposite Harry, appearing grave-as though he was about to tell the boy his parents had tragically died, the teen struggled to not roll his eyes at the man.

“Good morning sir, may I ask what this is about?” 

“Ah, yes well-as my letter said, I knew your parents-quite well actually, me and James were good friends.” the werewolf gazed off into the middle distance, seeming to have a flashback of ‘simpler times’. Harry examined the tea slowly cooling in front of him, it didn't seem drugged, but one could never be too careful.

_You aren't even affected by drugs, just drink the tea._

_I'm not affected by poisons you idiot, or have you forgotten the pain medications from this summer? He could have drugged it with veritaserum or something._

_You're so bloody paranoid._

“Yes well, bully for you sir, but why exactly is that my business?”

Lupin choked on his saliva, not expecting that reply. Tom started laughing.

“I-well, I thought you might like to hear about them…?”

_No, actually, thank you for asking though._

Lupin had tried that shtick on Harry in his last life, and had told him nothing but inconsequential things and happy little stories-nothing of particular substance. Harry had no desire to listen through that again-at least Sirius didn't sugar coat the pranks and bullying.

“My aunt’s told me plenty of my mum, and Professor Snape has regaled me with many of my fathers exploits, so I'm rather fine in that department thank you.”

A bold faced lie, sure, but the look on Lupin's face at the thought of Harry only knowing Snape's perspective of James Fleamont Potter was just incredible. Truthfully, Harry felt quite detached from his birth parents, a combination of never having met them and having a good three decades (mentally) to come to terms with their deaths, as well as gaining a considerably large amount of family over his second life. All of which assured that they were not much more than concepts for the teen.

“Harry-” the boy narrowed his eyes, “ah-um… Mr. Potter, Professor Snape and your father didn't particularly like each other while we were all in school, perhaps you would like someone else to-”

Harry was getting sick of this, “sir, with all do respect, I don't know you. I accepted your offer because it was the polite thing to do, but I don't really feel any obligation to be here, and I feel that you may be doing this for your sake rather than mine.”

That was the hard truth of the matter, Lupin was paying all this attention to Harry because of his parents, not because he actually gave a shit about Harry as a person, and the man needed to come to terms with that. Lupin seemed to disagree with that notion however, and went a peculiar shade of white, sputtering for a moment as he tried to argue.

Harry raised an eyebrow, “-or is there something else I'm missing here?”

As the sputtering ceased, Lupin rubbed the skin above his eyebrow, seemingly deciding to file Harry’s snark under ‘teen angst’ and ignore it.

“Harry-I'm sorry-Mr. Potter, I wanted to discuss your boggart.”

Cold, gentle rage overtook him, and Harry straightened his spine, schooled his features-stony and cold.

“What of it, sir?”

Lupin winced at his tone, and his general demeanor, but pressed on, “well… I met your aunt at James and Lily’s wedding, and I wouldn't have considered her that pleasant of a woman…”

Alright, Harry had lost track of where this conversation was going, they were talking about his boggart just a second ago and suddenly his aunt was thrown into the equation?

“And...?” he made a ‘please continue’ motion with his hand, eyebrow raised in silent question.

“...and it worries me that you might not be… well that you might not be well suited for a home environment that she may create.”

_You're a lifetime too late for this, Lupin._

Harry wanted to laugh, he really did. The Remus Lupin of the first timeline never _once_ even _hinted_ at realizing that Harry was abused, and now that he was actually living in a happy home did he realize that something had deeply affected him?

“You think I'm being abused.”

It was a statement, not a question. Lupin winced again, “not abused so much that-”

“Sir, this seems like the job for my head of house, not my Defense professor, have you talked to Professor Snape about your concerns?”

Harry was going to try to approach this diplomatically, and if that didn't work he would just up and leave, professionalism be damned.

Lupin sighed tiredly, exhausted by dealing with what he perceived as a genius child being squandered in a bad home environment, “I have spoken with him, yes, but we don't see eye to eye on this matter.”

Time to rip off the bandage. Harry leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and forcing eye contact with the man.

“I love my aunt and uncle, and me and my cousin are basically brothers. I do not know you personally professor, and I feel uncomfortable with this situation, as I've never spoken to you before in an actual conversation, please understand that. Now I am very sorry that you lost a dear friend when my father was murdered, but if you don't actually care about me as a person, I have no obligation to fill the hole he left.”

The man looked devastated, and his already old face seemed to age five years as Harry went on. It was the simple truth though, even in his first life Harry hadn't been particularly close with Remus, and his death had just been another body in the long list of casualties. Sirius was different from that, and his death had nearly killed Harry outright, Remus just wasn't comparable, and Harry wouldn't be giving him any pity.

“I'm sorry sir, but this seems like a personal problem that you have with some past regrets, I can't and won’t help you with that.”

Sirius was half crazed from his stay in Azkaban, and had often mixed him and his father up, since they looked so similar; other than those few times though (and the insanity) Sirius had always wanted what was best for Harry-he never would have used him as a means to an end like Dumbledore or Lupin were.

“I’ll be leaving now, sir. Have a good day.”

He left the man where he sat, appearing more worn and tired than he ever had before, but hopefully with some good advice that would help him in the coming years.

Harry didn't have time for hesitation, and he most certainly didn't have time for old, manipulating adults who thought they knew what was ‘best’ for him.

* * *

Theo returned to the familiar comforts of stinging papercuts and the dusty smell of ancient tomes. The Hogwarts library greeted him like an old friend, and he settled among the stacks of history with a smile. He had missed the beautifully carved bookshelves and precariously placed tomes, the delicate velvet lining on the cushions of couches, the infinite mysteries and impossible possibilities. 

Theo was home.

He hadn't been able to visit the library during the first two weeks, as he had been in the middle of a fortnight long panic over his new classes. Theo didn't want to think that he was squandering himself by following the path fate had chosen for him, but as Harry and Blaise discussed complicated (and completely incomprehensible, for him at least) rune schemes, and Draco and Daphne went on and on about the fantastical creatures they were learning about in Care of Magical creatures… well, he just felt a bit left out. Harry already seemed to have arithmancy near perfected, which Theo supposed he shouldn't be all that surprised about, but he still felt like he was squandering.

Among the towering shelves of ancient books however, Theo didn't need to be particularly good at anything, he could just be a fascinated student wanting to learn, and that would be enough. 

Brushing his finger along the back of a particularly old looking book, Theo sighed wistfully. Yes, this was what he was good at.

“Oh good! The nargles are leaving, I was getting worried.”

Jumping a good three feet in the air, Theo whipped around to find a tiny little girl that came about up to his shoulder, and would probably be about eye level with Harry’s belly button. She had crazy, curly, dirty blonde hair, and big, cloudy blue eyes. She was wearing a ravenclaw uniform with trousers, and had a delicate red oak wand tucked behind her ear.

“Uhh… hello?”

She beamed, “hello! My name's Luna, it's ever so lovely to finally meet you.”

 _“Oh merlin you're the crazy one.”_ He whispered under his breath, realizing just who the little girl in front of him was. Harry had talked about ‘crazy little Luna Lovegood’ all the time, quite fondly too, as if talking about a favorite pet or something. Harry had made note that the girl was also a seer to him, though unlike Theo she was more inclined towards seeing people's auras and thoughts than having any actual prophecies, which by extension made her appear a tad eccentric to other people. At the time Theo had brushed that all off, but was starting to understand what the taller teen had meant now, and his logical brain was screaming at him to get the hell out of the situation before his mind melted.

“Uh its-um… it's a pleasure to meet you, I’m-”  
“Theodore Nott! I know, Harry told me about you.” She leaned forward and smiled excitedly, and he wondered distantly if she had followed him to this… _very_ deserted part of the library for a particular reason.

_Am I about to get murdered?_

“Oh um… that's nice?”

Her smile got impossibly wider, “it is!”

Theo didn't know how to handle this girl, or even speak with her. Laughing nervously, he nodded a bit and turned stiffly back to the bookshelf, hoping that she might just… wander off. 

She didn't, and Theo was forced to stand there pretending to skim through a book as she waited patiently for him to finish.

“So sorry but, do you need… _anything?”_

Theo immediately regretted speaking, as she launched into a long winded and completely nonsensical explanation about why she had been stalking him for a good three days.

“Well it started with a large infestation of nargles that I had noticed gathering around the Slytherin table, first I had thought it might be Harry’s soulmate, since both of them have been quite high strung lately, but it was you! So I thought to myself ‘well Luna, whatever will you do now?’ and I decided that it would be best to help you, because nargles are oh so bothersome, and I would hate for you to be plagued by such pitiful creatures after such a daring escape from the deadly claws of fate. I know it was horribly rude to follow you around the past few days, but the nargles were swarming your ears and eyes, so I didn’t think you would have been able to see or hear me anyway-”

He started waving his arms around, flabbergasted, “now hold on just a bloody second, _what_ was that about Harry’s soulmate?”

She blinked at him strangely, “oh? So you didn't know he had one?”

“Oh of course I knew, but what does Draco have to do with… what was it-Nargles?”

She gave him a look that made him feel like an idiot for some reason, “nargles infest an unguarded and stressed mind-or mistletoe. Harry would be absolutely swarmed with them if he didn't have all the barriers keeping them out. That's why they’re bothering you instead.”

It took Theo a few moments to figure out what she was talking about, “you mean occlumency?”

The tiny girl rolled her eyes, nabbing a book from the shelf and admiring its gold trimming, “I'm sure you could call it that if you like, but ‘occlumency’ isn't an awfully romantic word, don't you think? I prefer ‘worry-not walls’, personally.”

Theo was hilariously out of his element, and wondered distantly if this was a yin-yang situation, with similar but absurdly different people meeting and clashing rather horribly.

“I… what?”

She pat his chest comfortingly, “I can make you a butterbeer cork necklace if you like? It'll keep them-the nargles-away.”

He could only nod slightly, his utter confusion bleeding away into intense curiosity as he studied the girl now pulling him along to some unknown location, humming a tune loudly.

Theo liked figuring out mysteries, and Luna Lovegood was arguably one of the biggest mysteries of them all.

* * *

“I don't know if this is such a good idea.”

Blaise looked down at the worn, little green book that had brought him to Loki’s worship, contemplating what the god had just demanded of him.

“Oh? Do tell.”

Green snakes coiled up his legs, twining around his wrists and squeezing in what he assumed was meant to be reassuring. A warm hand braced his shoulder, squeezing slightly as well.

“It's just that… well Victoria is still just a second year, and she's really small-”

“You don't think she’ll be able to handle it?”

“I-yes.”

A bead of sweat trailed down his cheek, and he swiped it away, glancing out into the expansive black lake in front of him. Loki had compelled him to find somewhere private, and he chose a small divet between a large boulder and the edge of the forbidden forest, knowing that if anyone came along, he would hear them before they saw him. 

Loki wanted him to give the little green book to Victoria White, assuring that she would join him eventually as a worshiper as well.

“I know what is best, Blaise. If I say that she's ready, then she is.”

He really didn't want to try to argue with the god, but still felt that this wasn't what was best for Vic. He had gotten to know her very well over the first half of his second year, and she was very strong willed and determined to succeed-characteristics that Loki appreciated when they were focused on mischief. The only problem was that Victoria only employed pranks to wrangle control over the bullies-she didn't actually care for them more than any other method of enacting your authority. She was honestly right to go to Harry first, and Blaise was sure that she would eventually go back to bothering the tall boy for dueling advice and spells.

“She might-well… I just think that the Weasley twins would be better suited-”

The hand and snakes tightened their hold, and he cut himself off, tensing slightly.

“The ‘Weasley twins’ are much too focused on chaos for the sake of chaos, they would never follow anyone.”

Hissing snakes and twisted, knotted vines coiled up his ankles. He chose this, he reveled in it, this was what he had wanted. It was unfair of him to take Loki’s teachings and magic and not give back with equal substance.

“You’re right, I'm sorry,” the hands and snakes and vines loosened their hold, and Loki embraced him gently from behind-forgiving him silently, “I'll give it to her as soon as I can.”

It was time to pass the torch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I was actually kinda drunk writing the first half of this, and low key hungover writing the rest. But hey, that's New Years for you, happy 2021!  
> PS. Draco will be the main focus of the next chapter, which is why he wasn't in this one.


	48. Heaven's on Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco enjoys some private time spent with his best friend.  
> Harry tells a few white lies.  
> Tracey is a true slytherin.

Draco was annoyed with everyone.

Harry was preoccupied with some random scheme that would no doubt break reality, and Theo had just gotten over some sort of existential episode and had been squandering away in the school’s library for the past week, mumbling on about nargles-whatever that was. Blaise had all but disappeared off the face of the earth- only reappearing for classes or meals, and Draco didn't feel obligated to hunt him down to figure out what was going on. Greengrass was still completely unbearable, and Tracy was hanging around her more often, so he couldn't talk to her either.

Everyone was obviously ignoring him on purpose and it was absolutely infuriating.

Well, actually, Harry wasn’t ignoring him, as the other boy did all his scheming and tinkering right next to Draco, but since Harry was never that far from him, he obviously didn't count in the general consensus. Draco tried not to think too hard about how inseparable they had become that year, as after they reunited on the train it felt like he was missing half of himself every time Harry left his general vicinity, so they were practically connected at the hip. He also tried not to think too hard about how the usually difficult to read teen seemed to be an open book now-Draco had always known Harry better than most, but now he could tell  _ exactly _ how his friend was feeling with just a twitch of his abnormally long fingers.

_ We’re just very close friends.  _ Was what he tried to tell himself, but the thought that there was just something  _ else  _ between them kept niggling the back of his mind-despite Draco’s best attempts to shove it down.

Despite his newfound clostness with his best friend, Draco was quickly realizing just how bothersome his inner veela could be. It was obviously getting quite antsy as the days crawled into October and the weather got notably colder, and Draco was positive that he would have to let it take over at some point. The place to do so was the question though, as while he would at first say that the forbidden forest was the best place for it, Draco didn't feel particularly comfortable galavanting into the dangerous woods.

Turning to Harry, he was about to ask about it until the boys position stopped him. Harry was sitting next to him on his bed, jolting down some sort of complicated looking rune scheme, his tongue sticking out slightly in concentration; Draco took a moment to smile at the scene.

_ He's so cute when he's focused. _

The thought crept up on Draco from behind and slapped him straight across the face with a fish. Turning a bright pink, the small teen took a quiet moment to contemplate his sexuality-not for the first time. Truthfully, he hadn’t ever felt all that interested in girls  _ or  _ boys, and Harry had been the only person who he ever considered particularly attractive to him. That realization had led to a lot of confusion on his part, as Draco contemplated the possibility of being Harry-sexual, instead of just gay. There wasn't anything awfully terrible about the concept, except for the possibility of Harry not being Draco-sexual, which made the blond feel incredibly depressed and far needier for the green eyed boys attention than usual.

“Harry?”

“Mmmmm… hm?”

“You go into the Forbidden Forest a lot, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Could you take me?”

“Mmmmm… why?”

Harry still hadn't looked up from his notebook, obviously only half paying attention to him. Draco squinted at his friend, annoyed that he wasn't getting the attention he so obviously deserved and desired.

“I think I'll need to shift soon, and I don't want to be near the school when I do it.”

Harry nodded a little, jolting something down with his muggle quill that Tracey had dubbed a ‘pen’, still not focusing his full attention on Draco.

“Don't veela launch fireballs or something? Starting a forest fire isn't exactly the best way to exercise subtly.”

Draco puffed his cheeks out in frustration and embarrassment, “well I wasn't going to try and light something on fire or anything, are you daft?”

The taller boy rolled his eyes, shutting the notebook with a huff, Draco’s entire face lit up, “it's not like you'll keep your mind through the transformation.”

Excitement turned to indignation, “of course I will!”

“Says who?”

“Says me and my superior magical knowledge and abilities.” Draco crossed his arms and nodded affirmatively, his blush slowly fading as his confidence grew.

Harry raised an eyebrow in response, “oh? Your ‘superior magical knowledge and abilities’ you say? So are you or are you not the man who fell on his arse the first time he cast bombarda?”

Draco went beet red, sputtering slightly as Harry laughed at him, “that was because I overpowered it!”   
Harry grinned a little, laugh tapering off into a giggle, “Or because you're short.”

“I'm not short, you're just massive!”

“Better to be massive than to be short.”

Draco scoffed, “hardly, short people have it far better than you  _ giants.” _

Harry readjusted his position, now firmly facing Draco and giving the blond his full attention.

_ Much better. _

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Well, first of all, short people can actually walk through door frames comfortably, a novelty that  _ you _ won't experience ever again after christmas if you keep growing the way you are-” Harry snorted, whacking Draco lightly with his notebook, “-oi! You know I'm right, don't try to deny it. Also! Us shorter folk are much better to cuddle with. Don't you laugh, I have sound reasoning! For instance, have you ever seen someone try to casually hug an acromantula? No? I thought not, now how about a kneazle? Mhm, my point proven.” 

Harry rolled his eyes, still chuckling a bit, “there's a distinct difference in threat level between a spider and a cat you know.”

“Hardly, I would be much more inclined to hug a spider that was considerably smaller than me to one that could swallow me in one gulp, and I would be absolutely terrified by a large cat that could do just the same!”

Harry set his notebook down on the side table, completely invested in the friendly argument. 

“Well I don't think I would. An acromantula that's been shrunk is still a far bigger threat than a normal spider, just like how a basilisk that's been shrunk can still turn you to stone.”

Draco’s initial question had turned the conversation into a heated debate over magical creatures it seemed, and he welcomed the change, as it seemed to draw Harry’s full attention to him.

“Oh suuure, because a spider that's an inch long and able to speak is just as threatening as a fifty inch long one, you realize how ridiculous you sound?”

Harry leaned towards him, taking up Draco’s personal space as his grin took on a teasing quality. The blond made a conservative effort not to blush as Harry's speech came out half hissed and deep, slipping slightly into parseltongue as his striking green eyes glowed faintly.

_ “Sssaid the sssspider to the fly.” _

Draco glowered, trying to keep his dignity while blushing furiously, “your stupid muggle sayings mean nothing to me!”

Harry broke out into that beautiful laugh of his, throwing his head back and falling away from Draco, his intimidating gaze giving way to obvious mirth. 

“What's so funny? Harry-Harry why are you laughing at me?”

The banter continued on as they cycled through the usual jibes and jabs while not actually coming to a conclusion about the subject they had originally started with. Draco didn't mind though, the only thing better than being next to Harry was  _ talking _ to Harry, so he was content regardless.

“What's all this then?”

Roughly an hour later Theo found them in the mists of an elaborate experiment involving an enlarged spider plushie and precisely twelve blankets. Their argument had dissolved even further into a compex analysis of the comfiness of various blankets, and Harry had summoned in several different types of fabrics and furs to figure out which one was the most comfortable. The enlarged plushy having been an added bonus.

Looking up from where he was wrapping Draco into a giggly human burrito, Harry replied quite simply, stating that it was a ‘science experiment’ before returning to the laughing teen, who was squirming around like a worm on the floor, trying to dislodge himself from the bonds that held him captive.

“Hold still you great lump!”

Theo sighed, rubbing his temple tiredly, “children, the lot of you.”

Draco only laughed harder in response.

* * *

The next day found Draco sitting grumply in his arithmancy class, wishing that he hadn't taken muggle studies after all. 

Originally, Draco had decided to take the course as a way to finally understand conversations between Tracy and Harry, as the two seemed _ insistent _ on speaking in incomprehensible muggle slang constantly. To his dismay, the class was obnoxiously inaccurate, as the teacher went on and on about muggles having squandered away for centuries on end, even though Harry had once said that muggles had gone to the  _ moon  _ of all things just over two decades prior, so Professor Burbage was obviously bonkers and completely wrong.

The worst part of taking the class was that he had to take his arithmancy class with the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff class of all things, since the Gryffindor/Slytherin arithmancy and muggle studies overlapped. This meant that he couldn't be in class with Harry (and Theo), and was instead forced to squandered away all alone with terrified Hufflepuffs and manic Ravenclaws.

It was an awful shame too, because it had taken him near the whole summer of arguing his reasons to his father, who was very insistent on the class ruining his reputation. Draco had eventually had to write a letter to Flint, who was also taking the class, to ask for good arguments for it. Apparently, the Slytherins used it as an extra study period, as well as a way for their parents to brag about being ‘inclusive’ during wizengamot sessions. His father hadn’t bought it for a second, but finally allowed him to take the class, saying that Draco would be running out of the classroom screaming by mid-November. It was an awful pity that he ended up lasting a month less than that, but Draco knew his limits and respected them.

“Can-uh… can I sit here?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Draco stifled a groan as Longbottom quivered in front of him. Harry had taken a liking to the boy in their first year for some reason, but the tentative friendship had (thankfully) tapered off in second year. Draco didn't really feel like making a scene in a class that didn't have anyone who would enjoy the nervous boy's embarrassment, so he grunted noncommittally and resolved to gain selective hearing in the case that the other boy attempted conversation.

Thankfully, poor Neville was far more focused on pretending he wasn't sitting next to an infamously grumpy slytherin, and it didn't take much prompting from Draco for him to acknowledge that they were ignoring each other.

_ The second I get the chance I'm dropping muggle studies and getting out of this hell. _

* * *

As Draco squandered away in arithmancy, Harry shuffled through twisting passages deep within the bowels of the school, intent on causing trouble. 

His first trip to Diagon Alley in his second life made it clear that he would need to befriend the Weasley twins at some point, and while he had originally put it rather high on his list of things to do, other pursuits had shoved the eventual meeting further and further back, much to his dismay. With the revitalizing of his efforts however, and Harry's realization that he would need more companions to help him in his pursuits through the coming years, he had quickly come to the realization that he would have to track the twins down and come to an agreement.

_ “Not all of the Weasleys were being paid off to control you, the older three brothers were mostly out of school and Dumbledore didn't really care about them. Those twins though… well, Chaos really loves them. So, being a menace herself, she gifted them with an urge to be absolutely neutral… chaotic neutral, that is.” _

_ “Meaning they don't care who you are, as long as they can prank you.” Harry surmised, leaning his cheek on his hand as he contemplated the potential behind an alliance with them. _

_ “Yep, those twins live only to cause problems. If you want to trust any of the Weasleys, trust them.” _

That's not to say it would be easy in any means, and Harry was beginning to regret not just sending them a bloody letter or something.

_ It's hard to say if I'll even be able to get out of these bloody caverns on time. _

Admittedly, without the Marauders map he was struggling to find the twin tricksters, instead finding a large amount of dust and unused passages in their place. He was extraordinarily lucky that Tom had taught him about all the hidden passages, or he would be obscenely, hopelessly lost. Though, as he was doing all this in his free period, Harry was growing more and more concerned that he wouldn’t be able to make it out before his transfiguration class that was set to start in a good half hour. 

“Knowing the passages isn't much help if the bastards aren't even in them.” 

He started angrily mumbling under his breath, the lumos lighting his way glowing brighter as his magic surged in response to his anger.

Harry wondered, sardonically, if he could just use a point me and be done with it.

“Well what do we have here, George?”

“Seems like someone's gotten a tad lost, Fred.”

Working completely on instincts, Harry whipped around and threw two stunners off, realizing belatedly who was talking as the two red headed terrors impressively dodged his attack, throwing out prank spells of their own in response. It took only a moment for Harry to cast a shield, and the jinxes glanced off harmlessly. The three found themselves in a bit of a mexican standoff, as they all pointed their wands at each other.

“Evenin’ chaps.” Despite his casual tone, Harry still didn’t lower the shield or his wand, not ever fully trusting the chaotic forces of nature before him.

“Evening.”

“Ello.”

Silence reigned, and as the gryffindor terrors shared a loaded look, Harry grappled together some sort of workable plan for heralding the two into some sort of agreement before time ran up and he needed to sprint back the way he came. A stroke of genus had him slowly lowering the shield, still half expecting them to send a stunner his way. When they didn't, he pocketed the elder wand and raised his hands placatingly.

“I was actually looking for the two of you, funnily enough.”

This seemed to intrigue them, and they both slowly lowered and put away their wands as well. Who he assumed to be Fred (it was hard to see any sort of distinguishable features in the low light) nodded at him in a ‘go on then’ sort of motion.

Lowering his arms, harry brushed himself off and started to explain, “well, being an orphan and all-” one of the twins snorted, “-I never knew all that much of my parents, so when I first went into my trust vault I took a great deal of time trying to find any sort of scrap of them. I eventually found documentation of a map that my dad and his friends made.” they both stiffened, and shared another long, loaded look. He continued, “I wasn't able to figure out what really happened to it, but I’ve heard rumors that you two seem to always know where people are, and one of the maps properties is being able to see where anyone in the school is in real time, so I was hoping you might at least know of it.”

Harry was lying about finding anything that talked about the map in his vault of course, but he had to make his random knowledge of the map have a reasonable source, or they would grow even more suspicious. Besides, a few white lies never hurt anyone. 

“So, do you two happen to know anything about the Marauders map?”

There was a beat of silence, before who he assumed to be George croaked out, “did your dad have a nickname, by chance?”

Harry grinned slightly, hoping it wasn't noticeable in the low light, “Ah-yeah actually, he called himself Prongs- it's written in his school journals.”

There was a rustling of paper, and someone whispering a hurried  _ ‘lumos’. _

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

Harry didn't bother to hide the wide grin that overtook his face this time, already moving towards the two and his map. 

* * *

Tracey Davis considered herself a true slytherin.

She had to be, ever since birth she had been plagued with being not  **strong** enough and not  **pure** enough. Her very first memory was that of her mother, a muggleborn woman with plain hair and striking blue eyes being forced from the Davis estate by her angry grandfather.

She was the family’s shame.

Her mother and father were very much in love, and although she didn't have a drop of magical blood to her name, Hellen Davis was a truly brilliant woman who survived through slytherin with nothing else but her wits and silver tongue. Dermot Davis fell for her in their fifth year, and they eloped right out of Hogwarts, creating a scandal that plummeted the Davis family from well known and favorable to of average wealth and class.

Again, she was the family’s shame.

Tracey had grown up without ever seeing her extended family on her fathers side after that early memory, and was dipped further into muggle culture because of it. She had grown up with her father singing magical nursery rhymes as her mother swished her wand around to create the tune; the household was so chock full of magic that they had a second, completely muggle home to use whenever Tracey wanted friends over.

That wasn't to say that she grew up completely in the muggle world, her father was still a member of the wizengamot, despite her grandfathers best efforts to disown him, so she was often carted along to meetings for the moderates to fawn over and pretend they actually cared about ‘the little Davis scandal’. She also got to meet quite a few of the children who would eventually turn into her dearest friends, as Theo and her had been well acquainted by the time they were six and she had once met eyes with Draco as he stuck his tongue out at one Daphne Greengrass.

That day was the first time Daphne had graced the wizengamot with her presence.

The Greengrass family was infamous for being neutral in most political aspects, focusing instead on their family businesses and getting incomprehensibly wealthy because of it. Due to that, Tracey didn't even get to  _ hear _ about the Greengrass heiress till she was seven, and didn’t meet her till they were both nine. They had become acquaintances quickly after that, and even Daphne’s naturally poised outward front cracked and splintered to Tracey to reveal a girl desperate for a friend.

“If you get into slytherin with me, I'll make sure they don't give you any problems.” Tracey still remembered that day. The first of September, 1991 found her on the Hogwarts express, sharing a compartment with her best friend. Daphne had been more quiet than usual that day, and Tracey had been growing worried, till the blond girl turned to her with pure determination in her eyes and promised to keep her safe in slytherin.

“Daph… thank you.”

Tracey fully intended to not only survive slytherin, but to graduate in infamy, and she fully intended to add other brilliant people to her roster of friends, Davis scandal be damned.

That plan had gone fully into effect when Harry Potter was sorted into her house.

As the boy-who-lived made his way to the slytherin table that fateful day, Tracey had taken in his cool deposition and too-green eyes, and came to an earth shattering conclusion far before the rest of the slytherin house did.

Harry Potter was going to change the world, and no one was going to stop him.

She quickly realized that if she wanted to be someone in slytherin, the only other half-blood in the house would have to be befriended first, and Daphne seemed to agree with her conclusion. They both took different approaches, sure, and for a few months Tracey had worried that Daphne’s rivalry with Draco would see her kicked from the group, but eventually the two found themselves firmly among a gaggle of brilliant, like minded people. 

Tracey loved all of the boys truly, they were like brothers to her, and she absolutely adored each of them for very different reasons, but Harry continued to be completely baffling in every aspect. 

She had a gap period with him currently, and while they usually just sat somewhere and worked on things for their classes, Harry had instead dragged her off to some random hall near the transfiguration classroom, and said that he needed to go find something, and asked her to stand watch and tell a teacher if he didn’t come out in time for their next class. After she accepted, he had tapped a seemingly random pattern onto the brickwork to reveal a partially crumbling passage that looked like it hadn't been used in decades.

“Bloody hell, how many of these are there in Hogwarts?” She remembered his knowing smile as he passed her his satchel and lit a lumos.

“There are precisely four hundred and thirty eight passages in Hogwarts, with seven that lead out of the school and another two that lead into the headmasters quarters. Most of the walls are hollow to allow so many of them, I should be back in an hour or so.” and then he had disappeared into the darkness, not bothering to explain how he knew that or where he was going, the opening in the brick closing up behind him.

She was currently standing next to a very rude painting in said hallway, waiting patiently for him to come back out. Tracey had no illusions that Harry was far more than he let on, especially after he revealed a still unknown creature inheritance to the group. She hadn't bothered to try and figure out what he was like Daphne had been doing, knowing that he would tell them eventually. She was more focused on what had changed in him a fortnight prior. He hadn’t done anything all that notable the night before the change, but that morning at breakfast she had noticed with alarm that he seemed to be far more focused onto his notebook than the conversation going on around him, and while she hadn't been able to get a good view of the paper to figure out what the deal was, she knew that look in his eyes-she had seen it when he was gathering information against Lockhart and when he stared down a dementor for them-and was able to draw her own conclusions.

Harry Potter was planning something… something  _ huge. _

The bricks started to slide away, and Tracey stood back from the wall as a dusty but seemingly satisfied Harry stepped out from the bowels of the school, an old piece of parchment in hand.

“Got what you were looking for?”

He grinned, “yup.”

Tracey didn't know just what Harry was planning, but if she knew anything, it was that she wanted in on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of people were talking about how much they love Theo and Luna's dynamic, and I wanted to talk about my thought process (generally) with the ships in this fic.  
> I really love the opposites attract sort of thing, but I also love yin-yang (opposites at first glance but actually very similar in some way) archetype, which is how I approached the two (confirmed, I still have a few cooking on the stove) ships in this fic. I also love assigning elements to people (lol, if that wasn't already obvious), so I also take that into consideration as well, which is why the current ships look like this:  
> Harry/Draco: ice/fire  
> Luna/Theo: wind/earth  
> I consider Blaise's element to be 'nature'. Flora to be specific (green, untamable and dangerous, etc...), use that knowledge as you please.  
> PS: I'm back from vacation now, so our usual (daily) updating schedule will resume shortly.


	49. Carry on, Wayward Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wayward sons of great houses fall further from grace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for making this one take so long, despite saying that I would get back to daily updates, but I struggled with a few of the scenes in this chapter, and had to look back at a time in my life where I was in a much darker place in order to describe things in a way I felt was accurate and real.  
> Warning: rabbit murder, panic attacks, mentions of actual murder.

Padfoot prowled through the underbrush, stalking past a bright, colorful snake in his pursuit of a wild hare. He had been finding a wild variety of things to eat in the forest, but very few things that the other predators wouldn't fight him for. The snake lunged past him towards some pixies, which scattered hurriedly, disturbing the hare and triggering it into a fast, jerky jump away from the excitement. Seeing his chance, the grimm leapt forward as the hare darted towards him unknowingly, his jaws clamping down on the animal's neck-killing it almost instantly. 

Sirius had been in the forbidden forest for about a month and a half now, if his rudimentary time keeping lended it to being about mid-October now. The centaurs were more or less leaving him be, either not interested in a random animagus hiding out in their woods or deciding he wasn't a threat to them and therefore not their problem. The colorful snake he was hunting near seemed to also want very little but a hunting partner from him-which he was grateful for, since the bloody thing had to be a good six feet long. The other beasts in the forest consisted mostly of a few stray werewolves (only on full moons), the dementors (occasionally), and a nest of acrotomula that he gave a wide berth to. Other than those creatures though, everything else in the forest was mostly harmless to him, and Sirius was living in relative peace in his temporary home. His days consisted mostly of hunting the hare population into near extinction-an attempt to get his weight back up to a reasonable amount-and sleeping.

Basically, he was insanely bored.

The only reason he had escaped was to finish off ol’ Peter once and for all, and he couldn’t exactly do that when the rat bastard was hiding away in Gryffindor tower, firmly out of his reach.

_ Blast. _

Sinking his teeth further into the hare, Sirius settled down to eat his lunch, still contemplating how to get into the school without alerting anyone of his presence. The wards would notify the headmaster of his being there-unless he entered as Padfoot-so he would have to at least enter the school in dog form. People would question why a giant hound was perusing the halls of Hogwarts if he stayed that way the entire time though, but if he turned back to a human, passing people and paintings would recognize him almost instantly. 

He chewed angrily, annoyed that it was near Halloween and he still hadn't even  _ seen _ the rat.

_ Wait… _

That was it! The Halloween feast would be taking part on the 31st and all the students and teachers would be in the great hall, celebrating and most certainly  _ not  _ in the common rooms. He could sneak in and nab the rat then!

Picking the rest of his lunch with his mouth, Padfoot trotted along in the direction of the forest's edge. If he was able to get into the common room without the password, then he could sneak in, steal the rat, and be back out again before anyone came back from the feast! 

Settling back down again at the tree line, Padfoot gnawed at the bloody muscle on a leg, tearing it from the bone as he watched the school with careful eyes. Harry was up there, no doubt spawning chaos in that perfectly executed way of his.

They would reunite soon, he was sure of it.

* * *

Two shadows swayed through the Forbidden Forest, a notably taller one taking the charge. The two people’s appearances were hidden from view by thin summer cloaks, and despite the weather being quite chilly, neither seemed to mind. If anyone was around to see them, they would be quite concerned by the decisive gait of the taller shadow and the visual caution of the shorter one.

The centaurs were at first nervous about the two and what they could mean for the forest, but the stars did not lie about their peaceful quest, and the tribe granted them passage through the woods. 

“Son of darkness,” the taller figure looked towards the one who spoke-Bane, and nodded slightly at the silent question, there would be no damage done to the forest that night. The two figures moved on, further-deeper-into the woods, passing by fallen trees and moss covered boulders. Coming upon the gargantuan rune stone, they halted, before moving directly to the right of it, walking for several minutes more before finally coming upon a large clearing.

The smaller figure whipped off its hood to reveal an extremely frazzled Draco Malfoy.

“Since when did you befriend the bloody centaur clan?!”

The other figure pulled its hood away as well to reveal one Harry Potter, who raised an eyebrow, “since my first year, I occasionally sleep walk into the forest you see-” Draco sputtered, “- and I met Bane one such night when he tied me to a tree and foretold my father's demise. He's also been teaching me archery on occasion.”

Draco shook off his cloak all the way, his face scrunched up in intense confusion, “he… sorry?”

“Foretold my father's demise and is teaching me archery, do keep up Dray.”

The Malfoy heir glowered at the nickname, blushing slightly as he shrugged off his overshirt, intending to reveal his wings to the elements.

“Your father’s dead if I'm not mistaken, unless you have him secreted away somewhere for safe keeping...?”

Harry winked mischievously, turning so his back faced Draco to allow the shorter boy some privacy.

“I would never.”

“For some reason I doubt that.”

Draco had his shirt completely off, and flexed his wings happily, they had started to cramp up on the long hike. Turning around, he started stacking up his clothes on a log, “you can look at me you know, my pale skin won't blind you if the sun isn't out.”

He heard a laugh, and the shuffling of feet as Harry turned to face him. There was a sudden choking sound, and Draco looked over his shoulder questioningly at Harry, who had his eyes zeroed in on Draco’s back.

“Hm?”

“You uh-” Harry cleared his throat, fidgeting with his sleeves slightly, “you have some… some tattoos…”

“Oh!” Draco turned fully, spreading his wings out so that Harry could get a better look at them, “these are the runes for keeping my wings hidden. I can't tell what the ‘ell they’re supposed to say though.” harry nodded, coughing slightly as he examiled them, draco felt a little embarrassed at hsi lack of knowledge of runes suddenly, “-nd in my defense they’re are backwards for me, so it's a tad difficult to read them.”

He heard another mild mannered cough, and Draco wondered distantly if Harry was coming down with a cold.

Shuffling awkwardly, Draco continued with his explanation, “they aren't permanent or anything, don't worry. They’re designed to slowly fade over the next two years.”

Harry shuffled his feet some more, though with his back turned away Draco was relying heavily on his sense of hearing to figure out what the teen was doing, and couldn't see the other boy's expression.

“They, um… they suit you-tattoos I mean.”

Draco made a face, “you reckon? I've never liked the look of them on me personally, though you could pull them off brilliantly I’m sure.”

Another cough, Draco risked a glance over his shoulder, finding that Harry was focusing very firmly on the treeline to his left, instead of Draco. Odd.

“I've considered getting some before, yea… but um-they really do suit you, Dray.”

Draco didn't let himself entertain the idea of Harry actually being flustered-because honestly,  _ the _ Harry Potter losing decorum over some temporary tattoos? It was preposterous-and instead focused on making sure that his already pristeenly folded shirts were still perfect.

“Right! Well-um, shall we then?”

Harry coughed one final time and nodded decisively, shrugging off his cloak to reveal protective armor made of dragon leather and imbued in fire protective charms. Draco had no idea where he had gotten it from, and Harry refused to say.

Throwing his cloak to the side, Harry pulled his satchel off and started rustling through it, chattering all the while, “so here's the plan: I'll set up a circle of containment runes-” he pulled out a ritualistic staff to draw in the dirt, “-in a large circle through this clearing. The headmaster won't be notified because we're right on the line between the inside and outside of the wards, so the wards will get confused and mementairly ignore us instead of telling him we’re breaking school rules. After that is set up, you'll shift and I'll take it from there.”

Draco had been nodding along with the entire thing till Harry said the last step, and he realized what he was saying with horror, “wait, you aren't going to be in the circle with me, right?”

Harry shook his head, and Draco went white, “No, I need to be inside it too keep the runes stable, that's why I have the armor-”

“-but you'll just be… in there with me?”

Harry sighed, “I'll be fine, Dray.”

Draco shook his head jerkily, “no you won't, I could hurt you-”

“-no you won't. If it comes to that I’ll shift as well and keep you contained, but I seriously doubt you’ll get that aggressive.”

Harry turned his back on him, moving instead to the edge of the clearing and started on the process of drawing the necessary runes into the dirt, mumbling what sounded like germanic under his breath as he did so. Draco knew that no amount of pleading on his part would change the taller boy's mind, so he instead sat tensely onto the log his shirts were on, fidgeting with his hands as he waited.

It was ten minutes of tense silence as Harry drew the runes, and Draco was forced to fill that time with his own thoughts. He didn’t know what he would do if he woke up in the morning to find Harry’s corpse lying there, and the thought of that fear becoming a reality made him shake, his anxiety growing as Harry got closer and closer to finishing the circle. He couldn't control the veela, he would be bloody  _ asleep  _ as it ran around the enclosed space which was now looking much smaller than it should be. Harry wouldn't have anywhere to hide if things got bad, he would have to face draco down head on. He knew Harry wouldn't hurt him, even if it meant getting hurt in the process. This was a bad idea, Harry was going to get hurt or scared or killed and it would be all  _ his fault- _

“Harry.”

He started tapping his feet, his fingers and hands twitching as if he had no control over his nerves. There was a lump in his throat that made it hard to breath. He was panicking.

_ Harry’s going to get hurt, you're going to hurt him. _

“I've fought things far worse than a veela, Draco. Please trust me when I say that everything will be fine.”

He tried to gulp down the lump in his throat, his fingers and hands twitching sporadically as his legs bounced faster and faster. Draco wanted to believe him, and for the most part he did, but there was a side of him-a rather large side-that still believed that something would go horribly wrong.

“I do trust you, it's just that… I-”

He took a quick shuddering breath, realizing that he couldn't take in enough air. His breathing picked up, short and choppy as his fingers flexed and shook painfully, the muscles tensing. His entire body jerking and shaking as his muscles tensed, breathing getting far more choppy as it became even harder to take in air, tears forced their way out of his eyes. Draco couldn't think, his mind taken over completely by panic as he realized he had almost no control over his limbs, his base desire to move or  _ explode  _ taking over and all he could do was tense his entire body and  _ shake. _

Harry completed the circle, and Draco felt more than saw the protective dome come into being, trapping them both inside. His nails dug into the flesh of the back of his hand, an urge to 

“Draco?” Harry was making his way over to him, throwing the staff to the side, “Dray, stop that.”

“I… I.”

Draco couldn’t calm down, the command to just  _ stop  _ was making him panic further and he scratched harder at his skin, the stinging sensation giving no repreve to his need to move and breath and if he stopped he would  _ die, _ he knew he needed to stop twitching and tapping and tensing and needed to just calm down but if he did then everything would just get  _ worse _ and-

“Dray-merlin.  _ Breath _ Draco.”

He felt hands gripping his own, Harry's green eyes locking onto his, “Just breath, Draco.”

He tried to take deeper breaths, his knees jumping faster as his body tried to continue exerting the same amount of energy as it had before. He was dizzy, his vision gaining white spots as he let out a fast, shuddering breath. The grip on his hands tightened slightly, pulling his nails away from the tender skin.

“Shite-not like that. Breath  _ steadily, _ Dray.”

A hand rested between his collar bones, the heel of Harry’s palm pressing slightly into his ribcage, only a few inches from his heart. Another hand gripped his right shoulder, steadying his shoulders as he kept trembling. Harry pressed him backwards till he slipped off the log, now lying firmly on his back.

“Deep breaths Dray, take in as much oxygen as you can as slowly as you can… Yea, just like that. Okay-shite, I'm going to start counting, alright? I want you to breathe in till I reach ten, then hold it for another five, then release slowly for seven, alright? We're going to do that till you’re calm again.”

They sat for another few minutes as Draco breathed in tandem with Harry’s steady counting, the scratching slowing to a stop as his head filled with cotton. He started to slowly relax his muscles, thought his toes and fingers still twitched uncontrollably and violently every few seconds, and his head felt fuzzy from breathing so deeply for so long, but he was calming down. He was coming down. Everything was going to be fine. 

Harry didn’t take his hands from Draco’s chest or shoulder, still counting quietly. His breathing started to slow into a steady pace, but Harry kept counting regardless, a steady tempo ringing out that Draco’s mind latched onto as a steady constant.

It was another several minutes of quiet between the two Draco stared off into the sky, unseeing. His head felt fuzzy and his arms and fingers kept twitching, but his panic had subsided and was now replaced with a fuzzy unknowing where he was only half aware of his surroundings or his own consciousness. Harry had lied down next to him on the log at some point, and was still quietly counting, occasionally asking questions like  _ ‘are you comfortable on your back like that?’ _ or  _ ‘do you need some water?’. _

Draco closed his eyes, toeing along the side of sleep.

_ Fly. Fly far away. _

The distant voice of his veela didn’t deter him from leaving the waking world behind.

Draco fell into oblivion.

* * *

Harry watched worriedly as Draco closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep. The boy had had an aggressive convulsion of some sort, his entire body tensing as his limbs convulsed, his breathing sporadic and choppy. He had originally worried that Draco had been shifting against his will, but quickly realized that the teen was having an extreme reaction to the situation. Regardless of his initial panic over the situation, Harry had managed to get the other boy calmed down enough to sleep it seemed, though he didn't look particularly comfortable on his back.

A sudden shift in the air had him instinctively leaping backwards over the log. Just in time to, as Draco’s entire body started convulsing once more, fire igniting across his wings and arms.

“Bloody-”

_ Oh, fuck. _

“Very helpful addition, thank you Tom.” Harry accidentally snipped at the man out loud, sprinting across the clearing away from Draco as he started to shift.

_ My apologies for not helping, shall I mosey into the glade with you and assist in getting your soulmate under control? Oh-wait! I can't. _

_ Not. Helping. _

The veela was still midshift, and wasn't causing any pressing concerns yet, though the fire along its wings and arms wasn’t doing the dry grass surrounding it any favors, and the flames were spreading worryingly fast.

“Aguamenti!”

A large stream of water burst forth from his wand, coating the grass around him in a semicircle and hopefully halting the spread of the fire further towards him. The runic barrier would keep the blaze contained inside of it, but there was no telling if veela flame was resistant to conjured water or not.

“Draco! Can you hear me?”

No answer, the boy’s features continued to shift into that more akin to a bird, the skin of his forearms and feet thickening into leathery talons. Harry cast another aguamenti as a particularly aggressive flame caught a fallen tree near him aflame, taming the wild inferno slightly as the water partially extinguished it.

_ Any ideas? _

_...Run away? _

_ Very funny. _

Harry could feel the wendigo rearing up for a fight, and shoved it down decisively, his determination to not hurt Draco overriding the demon's aggression. This was his soulmate, not some random creature having a hissy fit.

The magic around him shifted again, and Harry teetered slightly, sucking in a breath as his magic swelled and the air grew colder. The wendigo wasn’t trying to wrangle control anymore, instead seeping its magic into his core, melding them together, twisting it and forcing the glacial energy out of him.

Harry thought back, irrevocably, to when he had first shifted, and the entry he had read in his magical creatures book.

**The wendigo is a demonic creature known most notoriously by the Algonquin peoples of Canada. While the true origins of the creature are unknown, it is most commonly considered a human who had been infected by black magic after turning to cannibalism. One of the most ruthless predators known to the American continent, the Wendigo is known for its distinctive ability to mimic people's voices to lure its victims closer, as well as control over winter storms.**

Winter storms. He could control storms.

_ He’s mine too.  _ The wendigo seemed to say, and the air cooled further, the autumn breeze turning into an arctic chill as the water seeping into the earth crystalized.

The fire around him couldn’t burn his skin if the ice inside him froze it first.

Harry stilled, watching passively as the fully turned veela reared up and screeched excitedly, flapping its wings and unknowingly adding more fuel to the fire surrounding it. He breathed out slowly, his breath coming out frosty, water droplets crystalized as they entered the hot air from his freezing lungs. The clouds above the clearing swirled and churned, darker than the night sky and infinitely more ferocious. Taking a deep breath, Harry felt the wind pick up diminutively, the icy chill swirling around the clearing and knocking into the veela gently, pushing it back down to the earth.

Harry felt strange, as if there was something else being added to who he was, a molted darkness seeping into his soul and merging with it. Something cold and wet hit his cheek, and he looked up slowly to find… snowflakes. The beginnings of a blizzard were sweeping through the area, gathering up and caking the earth with inches of flaked ice. Usually, snow wouldn't be able to put out a fire of that magnitude, but with the near instant blizzard that was sweeping through the place, the veela was struggling to stay aflame itself, despite being the source of the fire in the first place.

The chanting had returned, but he was surprised to find that it seemed different somehow. Slower, less aggressive and more… gentle? He moved smoothly though the quickly rising snow, unable to see farther than a foot but knowing exactly where Draco was regardless. A confused  _ scree _ echoed from close ahead and made him halt, the snow quickly gathering on his shoulders and head, clinging to his clothes and tickling his skin.

“Draco?”

The next  _ scree _ was closer than before, and Harry could see the faint outline of wings though the blizzard.

“Draco, you can stay out here for the night and fly around the clearing, but you can't keep setting things on fire, you'll piss off the centaurs.”

A tallon reached out of the darkness and grabbed at his shoulder, and the small veela pulled itself onto him, wrapping around him like a koala. He pet its hair (feathers?) comfortingly, feeling the blizzard start to wain into a flury, and then stop altogether. It had only been snowing for three minutes or so, but the white snowfall was up to his knees by the time it had all ended.

Harry didn’t sleep that night, instead watching from a distance as the curious veela crept through the piles of snow, growing more and more human like as the night went on. By the time the sun was up, it had exhausted itself and curled up next to him, now looking more or less back to normal. Draco woke soon after that.

“...Wha?”

“Mornin’ sunshine.”

* * *

Draco squinted at the sun as it peaked over the horizon, confused and sore.

“...Wha?”

He coughed, his throat was dry, and in desperate need of some water.

“Mornin’ sunshine.”

Turning slightly, he found Harry leaned up against a tree, making a… snowball? Patting the dirt underneath him, Draco found that he had melted an imprint of his silhouette into a good eight inches of snow.

“What on earth-”

Pulling himself up onto his elbows, Draco looked out to the clearing they sat in, eyes widening in alarm and confusion as he found the entire space was covered in several feet of snow.

“You're lucky it's Saturday you know, or we would have had to leave hours ago.” 

Draco turned back to Harry, who appeared much like he did when he pulled an all nighter, that being much the same but slightly more grumpy than usual and with a conjured cup of caffeinated tea somewhere nearby.

“Did you sleep?”

“Hardly.”

Despite his tone, Harry smiled at him warmly, “you only burnt the grass, don't worry. I just overreacted a tad and caused a blizzard.”

He gazed out at the clearing, “Bit of an understatement, that.”

Harry wacked one of his wings lightly in response, “come on then, we can still make it to brunch in the great hall if we hurry.”

Harry stood, gathering up his various things as Draco watched him, appalled.

“You want me to go to the great hall wearing  _ rags?” _

An eye role was the only response.

“Harry, I am  _ not  _ showing up to brunch wearing old pants that have three holes in them! Look at this-the hems have been utterly destroyed! Harry, Harry listen to me-”

He scrambled to his feet as the taller boy made his way to the tree line, gathering up Draco’s half-frozen shirt that was hanging from a branch as he did so.

“Sorry, too busy making my way back to the castle, won't you join me?”

“Harry, this isn't funny!”

“It's a little funny.”

“Harry!”

* * *

Blaise woke up to find that both of his dorm mates were missing from the room. Grumbling under his breath, he pulled the covers back and kicked off of the bed, treading through the shag rug on his way to gather up some clothes for the day. If those two wanted to go snog in a dark corner at five in the morning that was fine, but the least they could do was leave a note.

The teen moved to his armoir, pulling open the doors with one hand as he scratched his ass with the other. Blaise was a firm believer in mornings being for lanquidity, not glamor. Yawning, he grabbed at the first jumper and slacks that he could find, smacking his mouth loudly as his other hand pat around for some undergarments. Pulling his winnings from the bowls of his messy dresser, Blaise dragged his feet out of the door and down the hall, rubbing his eyes tiredly as he passed by Goyle on his quest to take a bath.

Ten minutes later found Blaise nearly nodding off again as he slouched into steaming water, twin snakes lounging across the rim as he sank further into the tub. These moments were cherished by the teen, those times when the lovebirds (who weren't  _ technically  _ lovebirds yet) wandered off early in the morning and he was free to wake up on his own time. He had never been much of a morning bird-though Theo was much worse about mornings than he was-and Blaise greatly enjoyed slowly waking up whenever it was possible for him to do so. Honestly, his dorm mates made him seem like the laziest man on earth, as they constantly woke up before the sun rose-the monsters that they were.

He opened his eyes moodily. It was one thing for Draco to have a creature inheritance and not tell them till he has a breakdown over it, but Harry  _ consistently _ freaked them all the hell out with his creepy mirror watching and uncomfortably long fingers for a sold  _ two years _ without feeling an ounce of remorse over not telling them why exactly he was so… so  _ freaky! _

He dipped his nose below the water, blowing air bubbles out slowly as he contemplated his friend's secrets. Harry was obviously allowed to have things that he kept to himself, it would be extremely hypocritical of Blaise to say otherwise, but there was a  _ very _ firm line between family secrets like a creature inheritance and somehow being able to tell a bloody  _ dementor  _ to fuck off and have it actually bloody  _ fuck off! _

His eyes narrowed at the wall opposite of him, the twin snakes hissing in tandem, as if acknowledging his mood and agreeing with it. Harry was his friend, arguably his  _ best _ friend in fact, but Blaise was feeling extremely betrayed by the other boy's secret keeping. He had confided his plans to pledge with the taller boy, had gotten nothing from support from him about it after his mothers intense refusal, and had even planned when he was going to be doing them and where with him. Blaise had expected the same amount of trust from Harry, and he had been deeply hurt when he found that he hadn’t received it.

He closed his eyes once more, sinking fully under the water with a sigh. He should explain that to Harry-explain just  _ why _ he was so angry, but his stupid pride was getting in the way and their friendship had been tense and passive aggressive since school started almost two months prior. Blaise hated it, he wanted his friend back.

_ On halloween. I'll apologize on halloween. _

A hand grabbed his collar tenderly, lifting him gently from the slowly cooling water.

“Blaise.”

The snakes hissed happily at their master, twisting up pale arms clad in sleeves of silk. Loki had arrived.

“I’m working on it, I promise.”

Victoria had been extremely miffed that she had been ignored by him for half the last school year, and he had promised to explain that morning exactly why he had done that, and why she should absolutely NOT prank him in retaliation for it. He hoped to get her to start reading the book as well, though he honestly expected her to just jinx him purple and be on her merry way. Honestly, that girl was a menace. Why Harry hadn’t adopted her or something was beyond him.

“Forget the girl, I have a task of more importance for you to complete.”

Or maybe he would just beg her forgiveness, reinstitutionizing a cult could wait a few days.

“What is it?”

The hand trailed up from his collar and wrapped firmly around his throat, and one of the snakes twisted down the arm to encircle his neck as well, squeezing gently but assuredly as it hissed in his ear. Vines grew out of the drainage pipe and wrapped around his ankle, thorns pressing lightly into his flesh… testing him.

“I need you to kill for me.”

The vines coiled through his lungs and took hold of his heart, budding flowers and tangled leaves tickling his insides-entwining with his soul.

There was no going back.

Blaise breathed in deeply, and coughed up pollen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In regards to Draco's panic attack: I've gotten panic and asthma attacks for years, and I actually remember my first asthma attack vividly; it was at a track meet for my school, I was 11 at the time. They only got more frequent over my teenage years, so I have many experiences to draw from in this instance. If you have diffrent experences with both panic and asthma attacks, just know that it is perfectly common for people to experience different symptoms, and what I illustrated here was based purely on my own experiences. The breathing exercise, as well as hand placement over the lungs and stabilizing on the shoulder are all things that my parents and medical professionals have done to help stabilize my breathing and calm me down. 
> 
> The uncontrollable foot tapping as well as finger flexing are also symptoms that I experience the most frequently, as well as scratching (I have several faded scars on the back of my hands from scratching them till I bled during panic attacks that were experienced without another person there to stop me from doing it, and I really didn't have control over myself in those times, I was irrational and panicked and viewed it as having the choice of either scratch my skin or literally explode) and of course the choppy, uncontrolled breathing as well. I've never come down from one and been able to just get back to things either, so I've always needed to turn off my brain and just stare blankly at a wall or something for several minutes to get fully out of panic mode, and I've never walked away from a panic attack without feeling like I was going to pass out from exhaustion, which is why Draco handed things over to the veela accidentally, he had really just fallen asleep.
> 
> My panic attacks were at their peak when I was thirteen, and having Draco experience them as well was important for me in that it really is the height of your self loathing and realization of you being a speck in the eight billion people on the planet. While I have long since gotten better with my severe anxiety, and am in a much better place now, these characters are kids that are being thrust into a war while also having to deal with magical puberty and the ability to accidentally kill someone if they got out of control, and need to show that they are gaining awareness of that fact. I used to have panic attacks over math tests of all things, how these kids aren't complete wrecks in canon is beyond me (*coughcough* it's because of shitty writing, fuck you JKR).  
> Anyway, I've already started on the next chapter, so the daily schedule is absolutely returning tomorrow! Sorry for this chapters delay once again.  
> Ciao!


	50. More Important Things than Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of letters over two months are revealed, and Harry makes an important connection between current mysteries and old memories.  
> There are more important things than love, though everything is intertwined eternally in vines and fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I taped into the side of me that wants a light academia aesthetic in order to write the romantic scenes of this chapter, I hope you're happy.

**Hadrian,**

**I would be more than happy to take you on for the summer, and Perenelle is so very excited to meet you, I'm sure you'll both get along well. It is a relief to hear that you wish to understand immortality and, one day, even wield it-but I feel that it is paramount for me to explain the nature of the philosopher's stone to you, before you even begin to attempt a recreation. Don't get excited however, as I would never dare to do so over something so easily intercepted as owl post. Instead, I am writing to secure your understanding that your first month in my home will be spent purely focused on the science behind the philosopher's stone, as well as the-frankly, quite poor-morals that go into creating one.**

**I hope this knowledge does not sway you from a purely intellectual point of view, and plead to the gods that it does indeed sway you from one day creating one.**

**Nicolas.**

**Nick,**

**While I appreciate your concern for my morality in relation to the creation of your stone, I regret to inform you that morality is not an issue for me. My family is not one swayed by death, if I am correct in my interpretation of your words, and it is of no consequence. However, if the history of the stone is one so bloody as you seem to insinuate, I do not expect myself to partake in the creation of one till I can be assured that the ingredients can be obtained legally. While this admission may alarm you, I hope that it does not sway you from your decision to mentor me.**

**Harry.**

**P.S. I apologize if I've insulted you with the nickname, but no one has ever called me Hadrian before and while I certainly enjoy the name, I feel that we are on less professional terms than the use of full names insinuates.**

**To the Heir Potter, Hadrian James Potter of Godric's Hollow,**

**I am saddened that your views of death has been sullied at such an age, but it does not surprise me. A child of your drive and experience must be far more determined to reach their ends than is expected of the norm, and your past tragedies do not elevate your moral compass to that of respectability. I am also saddened to say that you are correct in your assumptions, and beg your understanding that I have never, nor do I intend, to take a life unwillingly. If you have a differning of opinion in that regard, I ask politely that you keep it to yourself, or at the very least have a very, very good reason for it. Once more, while your admission saddens me, I stand steadfast in my decision to mentor you regardless.**

**Sincerely, Sir Nicholas Flamel of Pontoise.**

**P.S. Nice try.**

**To Nicky, a good lad of pretentious titles,**

**I must admit that my views of death have changed over the years as I delve further into my families background and the true nature of the hallows, but I would not say that my stances are particularly immoral in any respect, just of a differing perspective. I certainly do not think any less of you for confiding in me the truth of your stone’s creation, and assure you that it was never my intention to insinuate that I did.**

**On an unrelated note, I was wondering if you would be willing to study a potion I have concocted? I currently have no discernible way to test it, and am not fully sure of its effects.**

**Most sarcastically, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived-to-be-a-nuisance**

**P.S. You can't stop me, old man**

**Bothersome child,**

**While I would enjoy a conversation about the exact nature of your ‘differing perspective’, I have been forced by my world renowned potioneering wife to instead plead for a sample of this mystery substance. While I am afraid that my expertise is in that of alchemy and transfiguration, and can not give much in the way for analysis of newly invented potions, Perenelle has been hailed as the leading force in potion creation for centuries. Your concoction is in worthy hands with her.**

**Unenthusiastically, an immortal that has lived through people that are far more of an annoyance than you could ever hope to be, my wife being one of them.**

**P.S. I already have.**

* * *

Harry hadn't been down to the Chamber of Secrets since he had left the previous school year, and  Jörmungandr was awfully cross with him for supposedly abandoning the place. He found the snake curled up grumpily around a fallen rock in the main chamber, sulking. It took a considerable amount of pleading on his part to finally get the snake to acknowledge he was there, and when he finally managed it, all that greeted him were large puppy eyes and hurt feelings.

_ “~I have counted the moons since your departure, and you had returned to the school two months ago! Do you dislike me so much that you wish not to see to me any longer?~” _

Harry rolled his eyes at the snakes dramatics, hugging the massive head regardless in a show of apology,  _ “~I've been busy.~” _

_ “~Too busy to visit?~” _

_ “~I'm here now aren't I?~” _

_ “~Yes, and only two months too late.~” _

Shoving the snake's massive head to the side with a laugh, Harry requested passage through the caverns into the library, and eventually was granted it after several apologies, summoned cows to eat, and debates over if his reasons for not visiting were sound ones. Striding across the library to his workbench, which had five vials of the mystery potion, Harry contemplated who would be receiving the first batch. He was planning on testing the concoction out on a few unsavory people that he wouldn't be all that upset about potentially dying, and needed to figure out what order in which to slip the murky liquid into various people's pumpkin juice. A few months prior he would have put a little more consideration into his potentially murderous exploits, but-as he explained to Nicolas-he had no such qualms now.

Holding the first glass phial up to the light, Harry examined the opaque golden hue with careful eyes. The potion he had in his hands was the original one, and was notably less vibrant than its counterparts-he could only assume that meant it was less concentrated and by extension less effective. It would be the first bottle tested on unwilling human participants, and would likely determine if the potion was indeed fatal to the drinker or not.

Halloween was fast approaching, and Harry wanted not only to figure out what the potion was, but also to steal Granger’s time turner. He still hadn’t quite figured out how to do the latter, but with the realization that the wendigo was willing to allow him usage of its magic even if they were technically still quite separated… well it opened a lot of potential avenues. Usually, he would frown at the theatrics of plotting for Halloween, but he had to admit that with the halloween feast there was a window of opportunity where no one was around, same with yule break. Harry still had no idea how to get into the girls dorms, despite having tried to figure it out since his first year, and was half convinced he would have to send Daphne up there like he had with the armory.

_ Curse Gryffindor and his insistent need to have all his secrets hidden away behind walls of women. _

Godric Gryffindor’s weaponization of chivalry aside, Harry was feeling relatively good about how he stood in regards to his new plans. Sure, he would have to be forgiven by Blaise at some point and get Theo’s head out of Luna’s ass long enough to have a conversation with the boy, but getting the two of them on board with his conspiracy wasn’t particularly pressing, as he didn't plan on trying to sway any of his friends to the plot till at least Christmas. Tracey already seemed to know he was cooking something up, and was dropping hints that she wanted in on it, so she was likely to be the first he recruits.

Humming curiously, Harry pocketed the phial and shuffled through the mess of papers littering his desk to find his notes on the creation process, intent on making more as he went through the experimentations.

_ “~Do you truly think it is lethal?~” _

Jörmungandr returned to his side, butting against Harry’s arm as he examined his notes, much akin to a cat.

_ “~Honestly? I’m doubting it, the rats didn’t have any physical reactions and stayed alive for weeks till I released them.~” _

_ “~May I taste it?~” _

Harry scrunched up his face worriedly, Jörmungandr was an almost one thousand year old basilisk, so if there was even a small chance of the potion hurting the snake, Harry didn't want to take it.

_ “~I would really rather you didn't actually.~” _

_ “~Hm. Coward.~” _

Jörmungandr slithered off, leaving a flabbergasted and slightly confused Harry in his wake.

_...What? _

_ That's what you get for not appreciating the king of snakes in his entirety, he would have been more understanding had you visited sooner. _

_ Bloody hell Tom, would you stop lusting after snakes for five bloody minutes. _

_ No. _

Harry turned back to the bottled potion, holding it up to the light and studying it’s consistently once more. He squinted, turning the phial around and watching the low light refract through the murky liquid. It was strange, he felt like he had seen something similar before, he got deja vu over the coloring and consistency every time he saw it. Swirling the potion around in its confines, Harry pulled it away from the light and shook the bottle slightly, contemplating his creation’s consistency.

He remembered, inexplicitly, a potions textbook filled to the brim with scrawling notes and anecdotes, of Hermione’s jealousy, of the Slug Club. 

The potion’s coloring was almost identical to the golden hue of felix felicis.

* * *

Blaise sat in History of Magic, skin spelled purple from Victoria's hissy fit that morning. 

Loki’s command to take someone’s life had finally sunk in.

He remembered, just the year prior, when he had gotten incomprehensibly angry at Harry for willingly letting another student get hurt, and how he was now expected to do much  _ much  _ worse than that. The most unsettling part of his newfound task was that he  _ knew  _ that he felt horrible about the idea-that it was going against his base morals-but that there was something in him that was muting the feelings, something that made his morals nothing more than an afterthought.

Vines tightened around his soul.

Blaise didn't want to kill anyone, but he also wanted to... needed to. There was something inside of him that he could recognize as his own voice saying that it was against everything he had ever believed in, but there was a pressure around his neck that said the opposite.

“Purple suits you.”

“Piss off, Greengrass.”

She snorted, adjusting the grip on her quill as she settled back in her seat. Daphne and him had been getting along like a house fire over the past couple of months, as Harry remained in the platonic doghouse and Tracey chased after Theo like a lost puppy. The Greengrass heiress had a humor that was both sarcastic and sardonic-something that he could appreciate in his current state of mind.

“What's got your pantaloons all in a twist?”

She was still a bitch though.

He slid further into his seat, glaring through Professor Binns as he ranted on about something unimportant. “Nothing, you’re just more annoying than usual.”

He could hear her shift, the skirt of her uniform falling over one knee, her boney elbow resting on his shoulder as she studied his expression carefully, as if a particular squint of his eyes would reveal all his troubles to her.

“I’m the least annoying person you know.”

“Tell that to my dead aunt Maurice.”

She actually laughed that time, and he glanced at her in amusement as she snorted in a very unladylike fashion. Daphne was a particular brand of absurd, seeming so posh and put together till you crack the outer layer and she reveals her ridiculous, impish personality underneath. He enjoyed it, truthfully, as anyone who could fool the masses with such a bold faced lie as she did daily was obviously the best prankster on the planet and deserved his unyielding respect. 

“I bet your dead aunt Maurice doesn't know why you're so grumpy.”

She was still nosey as all hell though.

“Well since she's dead I'd say she has no business knowing.”

Daphne leaned closer, poking him with her quill, no doubt drawing something obscene on his cheek, “well since I’m alive, I’d say I have some business knowing.”

Flowers bloomed in his stomach, blush as red as rose tainting his cheeks.

“Well, since you're so annoying I'd say you don't, actually.”

They quickly died, shriveling up as the bile dissolved their delicate petals.

She pursed her lips, finishing off her drawing and patting him comfortingly, “oh well. If you're going to be a dick, I feel it is imperative that you have a sign somewhere warning others of your mood.”

She leaned away from him, facing the front once more, the mischievous gleam in her eyes dulling as she took in Binns’ lecture. Blaise glared at his desk, the penis drawn messily on his cheek taunting him like a fleeting kiss.

Vines. Vines twisting and coiling up his esophagus and through his lungs as they constricted and grew stronger, blocking his airways and wilting any flowers that may grow.

He had more important things to do than fall in love.

* * *

“What do you reckon has Harry running off all the time?”

Theo and Draco sat in the Hogwarts library, the former pouring over twelve different tomes at the same time and the latter lying on his stomach on the floor, in a state of fleeting but aggressive depression. Theo glanced at him, concerned for his friend and his sudden drop in mood.

Closing his book carefully, Theo contemplated how to answer the question. “I can only count about three times he's run off in the past month, that's hardly enough to warrant any worry. He's probably just in the loo.”

“Harry would have told me so we could go together, this is something different.”

The second Harry had left, speeding off after getting some letter or another, Draco had felt an immediate drop in… everything. He was exhausted, angry, despondent… it was as if all the happiness had been sucked out of him. It felt impossible to function and Draco was certain it was the absence of the Potter heir that was doing it.

“In the same stall?”

“What?” He turned to look at his friend, incredulous, “are you daft? It's a loo, not a public bathhouse.”

Theo rolled his eyes at him, turning back to his books, “well maybe he needed to go snog a girl in a dark corner and couldn't bring you with.”

Searing hot anger rushed through Draco like a storm, and the book Theo was holding burst into flame.

“Fuck-”

As the teen was extinguishing the blaze, Draco sunk further into the library floor, mood only worsening. He didn't know where Harry was, he didn't know why he needed the other boy nearby to feel happy, but there was an ach in his chest that wouldn't leave and he hated it.

_ If this is what love is like, I have to sincerely apologize to my parents. _

Draco could admit that he was on the cusp of loving Harry, but he was so terrified of the prospect that any sort of reaction to the realization had been immediately stomped down. There was a feeling of irrevocable sorrow that followed the concept of not having his affections returned, and Draco couldn't comprehend what he would do if it became a reality.

“Theo, do you know what love is?”

A raised eyebrow, his finger turning the page of a slightly burnt book. 

“Not the love that your feeling, no.”

“There's a difference between this and other love?”

Theo looked at him in a way that seemed almost… pitying.

“I think you need to talk to Harry about this, not me.”

Fire burned brazenly in his core, unstoppable and destructive without the arctic chill of Harry’s too-long fingers holding it back. Draco’s annoyance and anger built to a crescendo, and sparks leapt from his fingers and bit at the legs of a nearby chair. He was burning up, destroying himself.

“Sorry I took so long-uh… Dray? What are you doing on the floor?”

Draco glanced up, warm green eyes obstructing his vision of everything else. His chest cooled immediately, and the smell of smoke and peppermint drowned out the dust of ancient libraries and untold secrets.

“He’s moping.”

A chuckle, skin wrinkling around viridescent eyes as he laughed. Tanned fingers clasped around a phial of golden liquid.

Stormy gray eyes dilated, and a raging inferno tapered off into the flicker of a candle flame.

There were more important things than love, like a boy’s teasing smile, or the sound of his voice cracking when he laughed. An arm bracing smaller shoulders, assured voice whispering numbers in the dead of night. The smell of smoke sunk into woolen clothes tickling at his nose. Clumsy hands pulling the sleeves of his jumper up in the middle of winter, assurances that he just feels too warm in the freezing temperatures. Dark hair falling all about the place, shining eyes obstructed by a lightning bolt racing down the tip of his nose. Leather jackets, painted nails.

There were more important things than recuperated love. Things that couldn't be replaced after a rejection steals them away, and Draco wasn't going to give it all up just for the knowledge of if those glowing green eyes wanted him back or not.

Because he was selfish, and would burn himself up to see that smile every hour of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 50!!! It's a little shorter than usual, but I wanted something lovey dovey (angst, basically) instead of plot heavy, though the plot is still thrown in there somewhere.


	51. The Edge of Oblivion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last minute plans are made as children scramble to prepare for the beginning.

**Mother,**

**I have come to a conclusion that I need your guidance on-**

He frowned, and threw the parchment to the side, pulling out another.

**Dearest Mother,**

**How are you? I have been-**

“No, you idiot, that’s stupid.” 

**Mother and Fathe-**

That was also scrapped, there was no way on the good green earth that he was going to discuss boy troubles with his father. Draco sighed, rubbing his face frustratedly, trying to figure out why this was so difficult.

_ Oh, I don't know, maybe because you're asking her for advice about confessing your unyielding attraction to the one you fancy? Who just so happens to be Harry bloody Potter?  _ His rhetorical question was met with his own sardonic snort, as he leaned forward in his seat and planted his head firmly on the ink splattered parchment, convinced that if he hadn't already rubbed ink into his face during his previous dramatic groan of frustration, he certainly had now.

Anger swelled through him, as it often did when he was without his best friend, and Draco grabbed up all of the scattered parchment, lighting them aflame-he needed to release the anger in some way or he would surely explode.

“Oh-what's the point.”

He dropped the faintly glowing ashes to his desk and huffed tiredly, staring down at them with hatred. Even if he managed to keep Harry’s name out of the letter, his mother was bound to figure out exactly who he was referring to in all but five seconds. She would then write back a letter in her beautiful calligraphy that manages to be both reassuring and whooly unhelpful, and then proceed to mosey down to his father's study and gossip about it for precisely three hours-likely over a glass of brandy.

Draco knew his parents well-too well, some would say, as after his rather sheltered childhood-and he knew that they would be of no help even if they tried. 

Defeated, Draco snatched another parchment from his desk and settled down to write about his completely drama-free school year, his irritation subconsciously leaking out and singeing the parchment's edges.

* * *

Daphne Greengrass was not a fool.

She had been born and bred to be a business woman, brought up as the Greengrass heiress in line for an ever increasing fortune and flourishing business. Her upbringing and promising inheritance drew suitors like bees to honey, and an environment such as that bred women of an ironclad fortitude. Her mother had been of a similar childhood, and one of Daphne’s earliest memories was of the woman taking her up in her arms one night, when the servants were all gone to bed and her father was working away in his study. She was just a child then, still not quite understanding as the warrior of a woman whispered harsh words of truth in her ear.

_ “Be strong, Daphne, or be destroyed by those who wish to own you.” _

Her mother had molded her a set of armor forged of unyielding steel, and her father further embellished it with gems and lace. 

He was a good man, the Lord Greengrass, and assured of himself and of his family. With a determined set in his jaw, he went about life with a firmness that soothed those of strong will and made everyone else a tad nervous. He had come upon her kicking up a fuss one day, when she was a moody child of seven, and swept her up in unwieldy arms, kissing her nose with a small smile.

_ “Pretend to be an angel, my little demon, or they will tie you down as if caging a beast.” _

Her armor was molded from the blood and tears of the generations of women before her, and accented with the gems and laces of her family's wealth.

Her father had made people admire her, and her mother had made them wary to do anything but look.

Her armor hadn't crumbled or cracked till she made her very first friend, a girl born of scandal and repreve with plain brown hair and strikingly beautiful caramel eyes dipped like candied cherries in wine. The gem-encrusted armor rehardened and melted again as the days went on, and she became accustomed to the times in which it melted to a puddle at her feet, the diamonds and emeralds shattering across the floor as she threw her head back and  _ laughed. _

Daphne didn't mind. She loved the burning fires of retribution in Tracey Davis’ eyes as she spoke of justice and chaos and dying for the romance of battle. She adored the mischievous tilt of Blaise Zabini’s mouth as something went irrevocably wrong because of him. She snarled at the sharp nails of Draco Malfoy as he hissed empty promises of pain at her as she grappled for her wand. She was unwittingly empowered by the cold steel of Harry Potter’s voice as he lectured on about politics and morality and the human experience. She listened, fascinated, as Theodore Nott proudly blabered on about his most recent research topic. 

They made the vulnerability worth it-made the melted armor pooled at her feet worth it. She stood face to face with the looming figure of Heir Hadrian James Potter, scared out of her wits after he had driven off a dementor with just his words and icy breath, but still demanded answers from him. She stood by Blaise just the same, knowing that the others were bothered by her boldness but held firm as her friend grappled with matters he still refused to speak of. And years ago, on a glittering red train, she looked Tracey Davis dead in the eyes and swore to stand in front of her and take everything that slytherin dared to throw in her place.

Daphne hadn’t changed over the past two years, she had never been an untouchable piece of beautiful, crystallized armor, but as she fell in with this stupid, fun, obnoxious little group, she was finally able to reveal who she had always been, had revealed who she might just have really needed to be all along. Her armor was useless to her now, the wits and pure nerve of a true Greengrass heiress were the only things that she needed any longer, and Daphne refused to set her true self aside because Harry Potter decided to be a major bloody  _ dick _ and refuse to tell her why exactly he wanted her to break into the Gryffindor girls dorm room with him.

“Daphne, I  _ promise _ that this is important, and-”

“Then tell me  _ why, _ Potter.”

He had approached her after classes had ended on Friday, only two days before Halloween, and requested a private conversation with her immediately-much to Draco and Blaise’s chagrin. He had then explained then, in no uncertain terms, that he needed her help to get into the gryffindor girls dorms. Naturally, she had asked why, and (naturally) he had avoided the question.

“It is for a personal reason that-”

“Why exactly, Hadrian James Potter, do you insist on taking me as a fool?”

He winced first at the tone, and had then looked at her with an expression of incredulity mixed with frustration, “Daphne, I only keep approaching you for these things because I know you  _ aren't  _ a fool, it would have been much easier to just ask Tracey, but-”

“So if you think I'm that brilliant, why won’t you just put on your big boy trousers and tell me why you find it imperative to break school rules?”

Harry groaned, rubbing his hands down his face, “are you really going to do this, Daph?”

She raised her chin higher, craning her neck to glaire heatedly into his eyes, “Only Blaise and Tracey are allowed to call me Daph-and yes, I am.”

He let out a long, drawn out sigh of frustration. She smiled, that was a sign of victory.

“I am breaking more than just school rules by doing this, because I'm stealing something of great value. That is why you can't know, because you need plausible deniability if things go south.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Explain.  _ Everything.” _

She waited a moment, “Please?”

Harry looked at her, really looked at her, and Daphne felt swallowed up in green eyes far too old for the face they accompanied. There was, quite suddenly, a gleam in them that had her on edge, as if the boy across from her had taken off a mask-for just a moment-and revealed the truth underneath. As if he had peaked out from behind his own set of armor.

“I’ll be stealing a ministry distributed time turner from Hermione Granger, and I would be extremely appreciative if you helped me.”

Daphne Greengrass was not a fool.

“Fine, but only on one condition: I get to use it as well.”

“Deal.”

Daphne may leave her armor pooled at her feet when around friends, but there were forces at play that she would need it to shield against, and Harry seemed to know  _ exactly _ what they were.

She wanted in.

* * *

“Why him?”

Blaise sat on the cusp of the forbidden forest, his back to a familiar large boulder, his eyes watching impassively as a green snake slither up his leg.

“You wanted, desperately, for him to live not one year ago. It is a true test of loyalty to be willing to throw that away for me.”

Justin Flitch-Fletchy.

The muggleborn boy had never spoken a word to Blaise, and was wholly ordinary, but the idea of his blood on Blaise’s hands still filled the teen with dread. This was an innocent victim who he had gotten up and defended the mortality of to his best friends, and he was going to kill him.

Infantile roots began to take hold in his bones, digging into the marrow.

“How long do I have to... to do it?”

The second snake wrapped around his torso, meeting its twin at his pelvis.

“Hmmm… you must do it  _ before _ February.”

The deep purple satin petals of belladonna flowers crept up his throat, lodging themselves between his tonsils and tongue.

If he ever wished to speak of this, it would cost him.

“It will be done.”

Dark hair like that of a raven’s feathers flew about in the wind unearthly, accompanied by a twisted, cackling laugh.

Blaise couldn't discern what was his magic and what was the sickly green of his god’s.

He couldn't discern if he was the one laughing or it was his god.

It didn't matter regardless.

Who was he, but a vessel for greater forces?

* * *

Theo could feel the chilly breeze of autumn tickle his nose as he laid in the grass, the leather jacket he stole from Harry’s closet without the boy's knowledge doing well to keep him warm as the weather moved sullenly into winter.

“How do you like the necklace, Theo?”

Tilting his head to the left slightly, he opened his eyes and observed the most baffling creature in existence: Luna Lovegood. She was constantly following him about the place, and seemed perfectly fine with his apparent annoyance with her. Truthfully, Theo had tried very hard the first week of knowing the girl to understand her, but quickly found himself too overwhelmed with her sheer ridiculousness and opted to simply observe the chaos as it came. Things were easier on his already overloaded mind when he did that.

“It's fine.”

She had continuously gifted him little bobbles and dodads to wear, and while they were ridiculous, he couldn't bring himself to refuse the presents, or to not wear them.

“Just fine?”

“The definition of ‘fine’ is: something of high quality. Therefore, I have just said that I consider this necklace made of cork,” he held it up to the light, as if displaying a carefully crafted diamond necklace from the elizabethan era to a group of intrigued museum goers, she giggled, “-to be more delicate and intricate than most of the jewels in my families vault.”

She smiled broadly at his words, “Oh good! I was thinking of making another for myself so we matched, which string color would suit me best?”

She held up a jarring red thread that appeared muggle in origin, and some other monstrosity that was likely torn off an old sock.

“Neither, just use the same string as mine.”

She bobbed her head in an unrestrained reproduction of a nod, and set the offending strings aside, grappling around in her bag for the rest of the pleasant aquamarine thread that was currently twined around his neck. The wind blew across his cheeks once more, and for a fleeting moment, Luna’s cloudy grey eyes betrayed her true emotions, only for a moment, before it was gone. He saw it all the same, and acknowledged the pained expression with growing dread.

“What's the matter?”

She looked at him, her eyes glazed over with unshed tears. Luna was always so cheerfully sorrowful, it was sometimes hard to realize she suffered from the same affliction he did. Theo had first seen the truth of its toll on her only a week after they met, when he had turned from his book to find her staring off into the middle distance as if entranced, whispering softly of gem encrusted armor and vines wrapped around a bloodied heart.

She had been wasting away from their curse for far longer than he had. 

Her eyes were always cloudy, slightly unseeing as she looked on at a snippet of the future or a ghost of the past, never fully in the present. Not till right now, as the wind chilled his cheeks and tousled her hair. She looked so real in that moment, as a tear escaped those milky eyes, her pupil nothing but a pinprick of darkness in the backdrop of a stormy day, she looked horribly-incredibly-real, and it terrified him.

“Harry is going to fall on Sunday… on Halloween.”

His right eye melted from the deep chocolate he was born with into the sweetened honey of his left, lightening and darkening and testing the bounds of its own capabilities. He despised his sight, he loathed the curse that led him to the door of merciless green eyes, but in that moment-that horrible, twisted moment-he was thankful that he hadn't been cursed like Luna. Grateful that the knowledge of the future and the inevitable didn't plague him through the hours and minutes and seconds of his life as it did to her. He felt indebted to the gods for giving him that small repreve, that his eyes still held a sharpness that proved he wasn’t wandering into the future too far. Not yet, no-not ever would he disappear into an incomprehensible infinity as she did.

“He’s on the edge of oblivion, just as we all are Luna. We have to fall and hit the ground and destroy ourselves before we can ever hope to become whole again.”

She sniffled, rubbing those murky, ever-unfocused eyes with the back of her hand.

“What if he doesn't hit the ground?”

Clouds floated across his vision, blocking out the sun and diverting its rays onto themselves. Greedy things they were, clouds. Always taking away the sun and giving rain in return.

“We’ll rip him out of the sky, and send him tumbling back to earth, our very own Icarus.”

Theo didn't know why, or how, but he could feel the shift in the air with her. He could understand a small portion of what her eyes showed her, of what would soon be coming on the horizon. He would be the sun if he had to. He’ll burn up everyone's wax wings till there was nothing left but bits of feathers and burn scars from false promises, and then maybe-just maybe-the clouds would part before him and he could meet the moon at last in a stunning solar eclipse.

“We’re all teetering on the edge Theo, and I'm worried how you'll manage to deal with us, since you’ve already fallen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm ready to tear your heart out, throw it to the floor, and do the tango with Fate on top of it as you watch on and thank me.


	52. Shattering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry shatters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Depiction of an aggressive PTSD episode and memories of an abuser.

The day of Halloween was a cold one in the highlands of Scotland, and the students moving about the place huddled together in groups to keep warm, the airy halls of Hogwarts letting in far too much of the chill. For a small group of troublemakers, the chilly weather was a welcome distraction, and they gathered in a forgotten room to finalize their plans.

In another part of the castle, two seers whispered about the coming collapse with hushed voices, fingers frozen and eyes wary. 

“I can't believe you two are actually going against your own house for the sake of some measly prank.” Daphne Greengrass, an heiress of high standings and a generally unimpressed expression sat primly on top of a dusty desk, glancing occasionally around the abandoned classroom with distaste.

“Oh please, house loyalty means nothing over the opportunity to prank the entire school in one go!” Fred Weasley lounged across a dusty old couch, tinkering away with some sort of muggle technology that he had bastardized for his own uses.

“Yea, and it's not like we particularly enjoy Granger all that much. Stealing her time turner and then getting to use afterwards? It’s a win win!” George Weasley added on his brother's reply as he kicked his legs up onto the desk Daphne was sitting on and grinning roguishly at her. She harrumphed, and turned her nose up at him.

“I am simply communicating how loyalty is an important virtue to have-”

“Oh sod off Greengrass-”

“-if any of us actually valued loyalty, we would be in hufflepuff.”

“Stop with the squabbling, you lot.” Harry Potter shut the door with a quiet click, locking it behind him. The three settled down on his prompting, acknowledging his authority in the room as he set a large chest onto the teacher’s desk at the front of the room.

“Your tools for the evening, lads.” He gestured to the chest, and the twins bolted up-throwing open the lid and digging through the various prank items inside with undisguised glee.

“How exactly did you manage to get those two roped in on this as well?” Harry stood besides her with his arms crossed, watching the twins with something akin to amusement.

“We met by chance at the beginning of the month and became business partners.”

She raised an eyebrow, “care to go into a tad more detail, Potter?”

_ “This is brilliant.” _

_ Harry looked over the marauders map happily, glad to have finally been reunited with it. The twins were blathering on about his father and his friends, and all the while gesturing aggressively with their arms. _

_ “They’re our heros-“ _

_ “-absolutely incredible that you’re related to Prongs-“ _

_ “-can I get your autograph, by the way?” _

_ “-the enchantments are brilliant, your father was incredible-“ _

_ “-actually, can I name my firstborn after James Potter?” _

_ He traced Draco’s name with his finger, noting that the boy was sitting next to Neville in arithmancy. Strange, he didn’t think those two would ever be capable of existing in the same stratosphere without Draco throwing something and Neville turning into a wet blanket. It seemed that either Draco had found room in his heart for the Longbottom heir or hufflepuff was suiting Neville much better than Harry could have ever hoped. _

_ “I just can’t believe it, the marauders legacy standing right before us!” _

_ Who Harry guessed was George swooned into his brothers waiting arms, the both of them sighing dramatically, the low wand-light adding to the dramatic flamboyancy. _

_ “Right then, gentlemen. What do I have to pay you to give me this?” _

_ Harry was absolutely NOT parting with the map, and he would hand over what was left of his trust vault if it meant he could keep it.  _

_ “Payment?” George cracked open one eye, a very slytherin look overtaking his face, “why, whatever do you mean?” _

_ Harry could smell the trouble from where he stood four feet away, and stiffened slightly, his shoulders squaring as he prepared to bargain. _

_ “We have no such use for something as fleeting as money, good sir.” It was Fred that time, who sat his brother back up vertically with a flourish, the light from his wand revealing his equally conspiratorial features. _

_ “Well, what would you like then, chaps?” Harry folded the map up carefully, eyes squinted slightly at the pair as they shared one of their infamous looks. They turned their backs to him then, hunching together and whispering quietly under their breaths. Even with his ever advancing hearing, Harry could only make out snippets of what seemed like a business proposition. After some time of that, the twins turned back around and smiled devilishly in synchrony. Still as creepy as ever. _

_ “We would like to… propose a bit of a deal, with you.” _

_ He raised an eyebrow, “well then, what are your terms?” _

“So, basically, you supply them with whatever they want and in turn you use them as distractions whenever you fancy a little fraud and embezzlement?”

Daphne appeared incredulous at the prospect, he grimaced.

“Well when you put it like that, you make it seem like I'm going to start a coup d’état.”

“Well, I wouldn't go that far but this ‘deal’ of yours is certainly illegal in some respect!” Throwing up her hands, exasperated, Daphne shook her head and slid off the desk, ushering over to the twins chest of fun and peering over the side as well, seemingly trying to discern if any of it could potentially get them expelled.

“Oh, none of this is illegal, we wouldn't be able to use it on the teachers or students otherwise.” Fred seemed to think that would reassure her in any way, and Daphne seemed about ready to ask if Harry had ever given them something that  _ was  _ illegal, when the boy in question cleared his throat.

“While I would certainly enjoy a conversation about our occasional toeing of the legality line-'' Daphne's eyes narrowed, “-I'm afraid we really should get to finalizing the plan. We only have eight hours till the feast starts, and we all need to be completely prepared for when that time comes.”

The twins looked more excited than serious, as their role was basically ‘piss everyone off and cause problems for long enough to distract all of the teachers’ which was very doable for them, all things considered. Daphne though, looked nervous.

“I just don't know if she’ll fall for it, Harry. How can you be sure she even tolerates Brown?”

Daphne would be taking polyjuice infused with Lavender Brown’s hair in order to lure Granger to the Gryffindor commons and open the door. From there, Harry would imperious her, and make her take Daphne up to her dorm and give her the time turner. Harry remembered from his last life that Hermione explained at the end of the year that she never wore the time turner on the weekends, as McGonagall had her adhere to a strict code of conduct with the artifact. Harry would be look out, as the protections on the stairs scanned your mental gender, instead of physical, so Harry couldn't just take the polyjuice and waltz up there himself. That had been his original plan, but after studying similar enchantments on the slytherin girls dorm entryway, he came to the realization of the enchantments true nature, and was forced to make a last minute change in plans. Harry didn't like being lookout, but Sirius was bound to show up as well, and the animagus wouldn't take kindly to anyone else but him in the common room so blatantly.

“Brown is her dorm-mate, it doesn't matter if they even like each other, as long as you can convince her to go to the common room’s entrance, everything will work out just fine. I'll obliviate the entire experience from her mind afterwards anyway, so no harm done.”

One of the twins tuned into the conversation, “and about Lavender, how can you be sure she won't be around during all of this?”

Harry smirked, Lavender Brown had been hit with a stunner that morning, and was currently sitting in his pocket-having been transfigured into a pocket watch. He would be using said pocket watch to stay on schedule during the heist.

“I took care of it, don't worry.”

While the twin terrors looked all too interested in what he constituted as ‘taking care of it’, Daphne was still rather nervous about her crucial role to play in the heist.

“Yes yes that's all very lovely, thank you Harry-but all I know about Brown is how to replicate her personality and ticks. I haven't a clue what to say to Granger that would make her want to go to her dorm!”

Harry pat the girl's shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting display, “she got a cat this year, real ugly thing named Crookshanks, just tell her he's been hurt or some such.”

Daphne seemed moderately less nervous, and the twins launched into a long drawn out recreation of their brother and Granger’s last argument over the cat supposedly eating scabbers, complete with a very emotional reenactment of the supposed death scene.

Harry watched them with an amused smile, nudging Daphne with his elbow when she rolled her eyes.

_ I hope things go smoothly tonight. _

_ I'm sure it will all work out, Leech. _

* * *

Harry sat comfortably at the slytherin table that night, his features betraying nothing of his own inner turmoil. Regardless of what happened tonight, none of it could even start until Daphne tipped over the first domino. 

He slumped marginally in relief as the supposed Lavender Brown sped into the great hall, appearing worried and frazzled. Daphne was an impressive actress, he noted with happiness. The Lavender impersonator gripped Granger's shoulder and started whispering something in her ear, and the girl bolted to her feet. The two of them quickly sped from the hall, Daphne just barely able to keep up with Granger’s near run.

_ Go time. _

An explosion rocked the room, and Harry whipped his invisibility cloak over himself just before the glitter started raining down on the feasting school, sprinting from the room as a bastardization of the already wretched school song started to blare from an unknown source. It was pandemonium for the five seconds that he was still in the hall, but the noise and mess diminished immediately as he fled into the hallway, the doors shutting firmly behind him. 

They had a good thirty minutes till all the pranks would be finished deploying, and another seventeen after that for the twins to be hunted down and reprimanded. With a three minute long dead sprint to the Gryffindor common room, they had forty five minutes to spare for Daphne to get the time turner from Granger and for him to obviate the girl, and then all they had to do was use it and get the hell out, avoiding their past selves and slotting back in their seats as if they never left, hopefully without the polyjuice wearing off or Draco noticing Harry had been missing for longer than a few minutes at the most.

Harry put his long legs to good use when sprinting up the stairs to the seventh floor, glad that the paintings couldn’t see him up to no good under the cloak. He managed to catch up with the two girls on the fifth floor, and kept close behind them, tugging on Daphne's sleeve (their predetermined greeting) so she would know he was there. 

It took only another minute and a half for them to reach the portrait, and Granger practically hissed the password in her haste, sprinting into the passage with the two slytherins close behind. Harry just barely managed to grab ahold of her arm and cast imperio before she reached the common room proper, and they stood in the wide passage for several moments to catch their breath.

“I am…  _ never  _ going to do anything involving running for you  _ ever  _ again, Potter.” the voice of Lavender Brown came out cold and spiteful, and Harry laughed a little before realizing she was serious.

“Absolutely reasonable, I’ll try not to drag you into any more cardio.”

Hermione Granger said nothing, as she was under imperious and incapable of doing so.

“Right then!” Harry turned to the imperioused girl, focusing on controlling her actions even if they betrayed her mind. “Take… Lavender here to your shared dorm and give her your time turner, do everything else she asks of you as well.”

Granger’s eyes were glazed over and unfocused as she turned and started walking stiffly into the common room, the polyjuice Daphne following quickly after. Harry made sure the painting frame was propped open a little for Sirius to gain access if he did indeed decide to nab Pettigrew, and made his way into the commons proper. 

… and stopped dead in the entryway.

Memories lept to the forefront of his mind. Memories of lazy evenings spent lounging about the common room, playing chess and shirking off on homework. Memories of laughter and sadness and family that was not bound by blood but strong all the same. Memories of Hermione’s silly laughter as he lost another game of chess and Ron’s steady hand wrapped around a rook.

**Lies.**

The memories of a place he had once considered his haven were twisted with the deceit and betrayal and  _ lies. _

Harry was back in his first life, back to that small little boy with a scraped knee and lopsided glasses. The gryffindor common room looked exactly as it always had, and he stumbled into the entrance as he fell into his past, a feeling of numb revulsion buzzing through his body and ripping away at his self control. A long since buried feeling of fear settled into his stomach as if he swallowed a brick of lead. A buzzing tingle of adrenaline traveled from his brain and into the tips of his fingers, numbing his ears and making him shake. His flight instinct kicked into overdrive, his desire to run overriding all common sense, but something vile still keeping him bound firmly in place.

He cracked, splintered, and shattered. Harry’s knees hit the plush carpet with a muffled thud, his fingers brushing against the wool gently-caressing the soft tresses as his mind unravelled.

**Weakness.**

**Fear.**

**Cowardice.**

He was a child. A terrified, beaten, broken little boy with big green eyes, only still breathing because he needed to live just long enough to die by the right hands at the right time.

_ Who am I. Who was I. Who should I have been? _

Harry realized, in a horrible moment of clarity, that his second life hadn't even begun-not really. He was still the same scared little boy from his first, with the only difference being the removal of compulsions and potions and the addition of a few stronger players in his corner, but he hadn't  _ changed.  _ He simply couldn't.

Harry couldn't become anything more than Dumbledore’s pawn till the man saw fit to finally keel over and die.

An unearthly howl ripped through his mind, a demon screeching out in anger and hatred. He tunneled, focusing onto that animalistic side and gripping it with both hands, grasping at the strong, powerful wendigo and begging to be made indestructible. Begging to become untouchable.

When he had met with Luna in September, in the astronomy tower, Harry had been on the cusp of this destruction, of finally realizing that nothing separated his first and last life because he was still  _ the same,  _ that he was still trapped in a chess game as nothing but a lowly pawn; but he had held the fracturing pieces together with tape and glue and sheer determined  _ ignorance. _ He had turned his back on the truth-had locked it up in the recesses of his mind to be ignored and allowed the wounds to fester and grow more destructive and deep than they would have been before.

Now though, the lock he had placed was broken, and Harry dug deeper into himself, trying to escape the pain and anguish and  **weakness.** Wanting desperately to just stop  _ feeling. _

The entire room exploded outwards.

He didn't want to see it anymore, didn't want to see the prison of his first life and the ghost of his second. He didn't want to see the taint-the vile, twisted cage-that had kept him willingly compliant for much of his life.

**Martyr.**

**Sacrifice.**

**Tool.**

**That's all you are, Harry Potter, a tool in the hand of a more worthy being.**

He heard a scream, and a chain was hooked around his neck.

“Bloody hell Potter, what part of discretion do you not understand-”

Everything went black.

* * *

Daphne was knocked off her feet by the tremor as it passed through her, and she knew immediately that something was Very Wrong. Turning to Granger, she performed what she hoped to be a good enough obliviation to cover her tracks before sprinting down the rest of the stairs, finding the common room in a state-that being nothing more than ash.

She cursed, fumbling for the golden chain she had wrapped around her neck only minutes prior.

Harry sat on his knees in the entrance way of the room, staring out at the carnage unseeingly. She didn't know what had happened, but Harry was in no state to function past breathing from the looks of things. 

A crash allerted her to a section of the roof giving way, and Daphne impulsively screamed, ducking from falling debris as she clambered over to Harry, who didn't seem to have even realized that the entire  _ bloody tower  _ was going down.

“How the hell can one bloke have the magical reserves needed to blast the bloody foundation off a magically fortified tower?” She grasped his shoulders, wrapping the time turner around both of their necks and fumbling for the tiny nob, glad that she had learned how to use one in preparation for this.

“Bloody hell Potter, what part of discretion do you not understand?” 

She started turning, and the past twenty minutes rewound itself. 

She sighed, relieved, and then groaned as Harry proceeded to pass out, slumping against her.

“Bloody-you better compensate me for all the trouble you've made today, Harry.”

Yanking the chain off of him and shoving it back down her gryffindor uniform collar, she levitated him up into the air, pulling the invisibility cloak from where it lay next to them and situating it over his prone form, herself still being under polyjuice and therefor free to do as she pleased in full view of the magical paintings. She crept from the room, darting past snoring paintings and occasionally glancing worriedly at the invisible and unconscious teen. It was ten minutes of tense silence as she slowly levitated Harry down to the slytherin commons, her mind running a mile a minute as she quickly came up with a workable solution to this unseen variable. Most of the paintings in the dungeons wouldn't snitch on her for being there, so Daphne felt assured in being able to bring Harry back to his bed. Hopefully, with the pandemonium of the Weasley twins pranks, no one would notice their disappearance for the night, and the pure chaos that would be created if the gryffindor tower truly did fall would assure them of complete innocence through everyone's pure panic. Sirius Black’s reputation for explosive magic would also come in handy, as the destruction of the tower would no doubt be quickly written off as his doing. 

Whispering the password to the common room entrance, Daphne sped quickly up the stairs and into the boys dorms, hunting down the third year boys room and floating Harry onto his bed, ripping the invisibility cloak off of him as she went.

She stood, her eyes closed and heartbeat drumming in her ears for several moments, gathering herself after breaking at least four school rules, committing a punishable crime, and aiding in her friend’s unintentional terrorism.

_ Mum would be proud of you Daphne, but you need to get away with it first before you’re able to tell her. _

Her eyes opened, a determined set to her jaw as she threw the cloak around herself, intent on gathering up all their friends, making sure the idiotic twin terrors were firmly in the blame, and tying up the loose ends.

* * *

Draco was in the process of hiding under the slytherin table with the rest of the smart people when a horrible pain had him doubling over in agony. It felt as though his soul was being _ flayed alive.  _ No, not his soul.

“Harry-”

He was out from under the table and sprinting out of the great hall near instantaneously with his realization, dodging fireworks and glitter and what have you in his effort to follow the immeasurable pain to wherever the other boy was.

_ Something’s wrong with Harry. _

He had never moved that fast and likely wouldn't ever again, adrenalin and sheer, incomprehensible  _ fear  _ made the pain from over exertion go numb as he bolted down stairs and through passageways. He raced around a particularly sharp corner and collided into an invisible force, nearly toppling over only a floor away from the slytherin commons.

“Malfoy!”

He whipped around, panic flooding his base instincts as Greengrass threw off an invisibility cloak. They stood there, calm blue eyes meeting panicked grey ones, and a decade long feud was set aside for just a small, wavering moment.

“He's in your dorm.”

Draco was off like a rocket, not even bothering to register that Daphne seemed to know what happened and how and why. Focused purely on getting to Harry as fast as he physically could.

The door to the dorm slammed open, and he was across the room and onto Harry's bed in an instant, hugging himself to the prone form of his best friend and feeling as though he was about to  _ shatter. _ His magic lashed out around them, and his wings beat against their confines, the feeling of utter helplessness taking hold and pulling him further into Harry's own suffering. Draco could  _ feel  _ it, could feel that something was horribly, awfully wrong with Harry’s soul, but had no idea what it could possibly be or how to fix it.

_ What do I do? _

Fire raced across his fingertips as he melted closer to Harry’s side, trying-subconsciously-to shove the heat onto shattered glass and melt it all back together again.

“Harry-Harry please what is going  _ on?” _

He buried his face in the crook of the taller boy's neck, breathing in the familiar scent of smoke and trying desperately to ground himself in reality long enough to think clearly.

_ Ba-bump Ba-bump Ba-bump _

A steady heartbeat assured him that whatever had happened wasn’t affecting the boy physically, and Draco took small reprieve in the knowledge that if anything, Harry was still breathing-still  _ living. _

His ears were bombarded with the sudden and loud entrance of several worried voices as people filtered into the room, and he clutched the unconscious teen tighter, wishing to just be left alone with him-left alone to try and mend the ache.

“Everyone, get out.”

“Theo-“

“We’ll go to my dorm to talk about this mess Daphne, but there’s no reason for us to be in here.”

“No way in hell am I-“

“Blaise, shut up. We’re leaving, right now.”

And then it was quiet once more.

Draco relaxed marginally, grasping for one of Harry’s hands and holding to it tightly, ignoring the pain in his chest and the tears in his eyes.

**Fire alone is not hot enough to melt glass, but it might just soften the sharp edges.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't understand what happened, I don't completely blame you, as this chapter has about as many metaphors as actual substance (lol self burn) so I'll explain what exactly just happened:  
> Harry has PTSD, and in the process of gaining occlumency, was able to shove all of the emotions and memories that were connected to that PTSD aside to be ignored. Of course, ignoring it does a great deal of shit when you finally pay attention to it again, and seeing the gryffindor common room-a place that he spend time in with his friends and betrayers, brought all of that back to the forefront of his mind and he couldn't handle it. He had almost done this in the astronomy tower, which I described as cracking or splintering, but hadn't fully managed a complete breakdown like this, since all he did was remember the feelings, not actually sit in the main room where all the memories were formed.  
> Harry's greatest fear is NOT weakness, it is being under Dumbledore's control. With the realization that he couldn't truly become anything other than that while Dumbledore was still alive, he mentally shut down-preferring unconsciousness over confronting the reality of his situation.  
> While I wouldn't consider this chapter to be the worst thing that will ever happen to Harry, it is where I have marked the start of his emotional and mental decline, as it is the root cause of his emotional agony for the rest of... well pretty much the rest of this fic, at least till he kills the root of the issue and is finally able to begin healing.


	53. Aftershocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tower crumbles and everything else follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *manic laughter* Are you ready???

**Previously:**

**Draco relaxed marginally, grasping for one of Harry’s hands and holding to it tightly, ignoring the pain in his chest and the tears in his eyes.**

**_Fire alone is not hot enough to melt glass, but it might just soften the sharp edges._ **

* * *

Hermione Granger shook herself, glancing around the gryffindor common room with confusion. Unfortunately for the poor girl, Daphne had never actually practiced the obliviate spell, and had accidentally erased the past week from her memory, instead of the past hour. This exceptional gap in her memory caused Hermione to focus all of her attention on trying to figure out why she was suddenly in the common room instead of in astronomy as she remembered last. Her confusion allowed her to momentarily ignore the current state of the room around her for the brief handful of seconds that would have been considered the opportune time to get out, and the structure reached its moment of collapse just a millisecond before she finally lept into action.

Hurling herself down the last few steps and into the commons proper, Hermione stumbled over fallen and falling debris, the roof caving in as she fell over herself to escape. Many unfortunate things took place in that moment, the first being the irrationality curse taking effect at that very second-as it was created to do-as well as a piece of timber cracking and collapsing downward onto her left leg, trapping her under it and rendering the girl immobile. The third (and arguably most damning) thing to happen to the girl was Peter Pettegrew, who-having been woken from his nap during the initial explosion-was scampering down the stairs from the boys dorms, jumping over falling rubble that blocked his way to safety. Following Pettegrew was Crookshanks, who was far too focused on trying to attack the rat and then escaping to see that his owner was very clearly in distress. If the rat had not come running down the stairs in that moment, the cat would have most certainly noticed that Hermione was there and trapped. Alas, the girl was ignored and both animals were out of the passage just in time to escape completely unharmed.

Hermione was not so lucky.

Her jumbled and confused brain was further sullied by her overwhelming urge to scream and panic instead of thinking rationally to find a mode to escape, the irrationality curse stamping down what sharpness her mind still held as her hysteria grew. Flailing about the place and screaming, Hermione yanked at her pinned leg, trying to dislodge it but only working to injure her skin as it scraped against the rough wood.

“HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!”

She started to scream out into the empty room, terror gripping her voice. Down the hall, several Professors that had been running up from the Great hall quickened their pace, now sprinting as they realized someone was clearly stuck inside the collapsing tower. Minerva McGonagall recognized the voice with horror, and whipped out her wand to cast several spells, which flew out of her wand as ropes of pure magic, shooting through the air and latching onto the wards of the castle, holding what was still left of the tower’s defenses in place and hopefully buying them more seconds of time till it collapsed.

As the professors passed a shadowed staircase, a large grimm crept forward with caution, trying to discern what was happening. Sirius quickly got distracted however, as a very familiar rat darted through his legs, followed by a large ginger cat. He made chase after the two, quickly catching up and lunging for the rat, nabbing the squeaking thing in his jaws-holding just hard enough to draw blood, but not enough to kill. Crookshanks quickly dubbed Padfoot a non-threat, and trotted along with him as he made his way happily down the rest of the stairs, intending on removing himself from the school as fast as possible now that he had what he came for.

As this was happening, the floor of the gryffindor commons started to collapse from the middle outwards. The girl trapped just barely three feet from the exit screamed again, being unable to do anything other than watch with horror as the floor beneath her began to crumble. 

“Miss. Granger!” 

McGonagall threw open the portrait hole, lunging forward to grab the girl as she slipped downwards, but was stopped in her tracks and ripped backwards as Severus Snape-who had rushed forward from the back of the group with shocking agility-gripped the back of her robe collar with his left hand and pulled her towards him, saving her from a perilous fall as the floor below her gave way. Nearly simultaneously, Filius Flitwick half threw himself over the edge to cast a softening charm on the third year girl, just as she slipped from the ledge and plummeted seven stories to the rubble below.

The professors watched with horror as the entire interior of the common room collapsed, the upper floors shaking more aggressively with the increased instability.

“Dear god…” Snape was sheet white, still holding fast to McGonagall as she stared blankly at the area Granger had just unwillingly vacated.

“Do you-do you think she lived?” Pomona Sprout questioned mutley, gathering the shocked Minerva from Snape’s arms and handing her a calming drought, comfortingly rubbing the older woman’s back as she drank it.

“Call Poppy to the first floor, I will need her assistance.” Stiffening his shoulders as he spoke, Snape designed to not reply to the woman as he cast a series of complicated charms on his person and jumped off the edge, floating slowly to the rubble-filled floor below. As he did so, Septima Vector rushed off to alert the mediwitch as Flitwick waved his wand in wide circles, stabilizing the upper floors for the time being-though if he halted the movements for even a second, the dorms and towers walls would no doubt collapse onto the two people below.

“Come now Minerva, this is not a time to be going into shock. Chin up dear.” Sprout pulled the woman away from the ledge, leading her down in the direction Vector had run off to.

Now down among the wreckage, Snape quickly found Hermione Granger's prone form lying under a large block of stone. The girl's hand was the only thing visible under the dust and debris, and Snape grasped her wrist, feeling for a pulse hurriedly. Sighing in slight relief, he found the girl was alive-if only just-and quickly set to work removing the offending rubble from around the injured student. As he went, it became apparent to Snape that if Fillius had not cast the cushioning charm when he did, the girl would be nothing but a splatter of blood and guts on the pale stone she landed on. Even as it was, her condition did not lend her to an easy recovery.

Hunching down, Snape cast as many diagnostic charms as he knew, finding that there was simply no good news of the girl's condition besides her being alive. Levitating Granger from her place on top of the bloodied stone, Snape went to quick work healing the most pressing wounds, wincing grimly at the large gaping hole left in her abdominan where the sharp point of a support beam had skewered her.

“Severus! I’m here.”

Poppy Pomfrey rushed to his side as he listed off what he already knew of the muggleborn’s condition, and she joined him in his efforts of healing the abdominal wound with vigor.

“Should we move her?” Professor Vector stood on the other side of the girl, keeping the levitation spell steady as the other two worked.

Poppy shook her head, her eyes not leaving Granger’s stomach, “her condition is too dire. We need to stabilize her first.”

As the professors worked away, a grimm and ginger half-kneazle made their way out of the school, the wriggling form of a large rat in the dog’s jaws. The dog broke out into a faster trot once he reached the open fields that marked the passage between the school and forbidden forest, and the cat matched his pace with gusto, apparently having found a more favored companion than the near-dead girl currently getting her guts regrown.

* * *

Daphne Greengrass sat primly in a chair, her arms crossed and a steely gaze locked onto the three people across from her, seemingly awaiting a reaction from them.

“So let me get this straight-” the group of Slytherin third years were crowded in Theo’s dorm room, and had listened in shocked silence for the past several minutes as Daphne tersely but effectively explained just what in the _ever loving fuck_ was going on. 

Theo was not taking it well.

“-the two of you _stole_ a _ministry owned_ time turner, and just... _accidentally_ blew up Gryffindor tower in the process?”

Theo seemed incapable of deciding if he should be impressed or horrified. Blaise looked like he was about to propose. 

Daphne scoffed, incredulous. “Of course not, I merely took it from Granger’s hands. You can hardly call it stealing if she willingly gives it to you. AND the entire thing was Harry’s idea, so I hold absolutely no moral obligation to take the fall from it… also, Harry blew up the tower all on his own, and I’m _nearly_ certain it was on accident.”

_“Nearly?!”_

The heterochromic teen looked on the verge of a serious mental breakdown-or cardiac arrest-as he clutched his shirt and stared slack jawed at the Greengrass heiress.

Blaise started clapping, “either way, that was absolutely brilliant love, cheers.”

The tall teen had a manic grin on his face and a greenish tint to his eyes as he hugged the shorter girl to his chest celebratory. Tracey laughed and whooped as well, clapping with barely restrained glee as Theo made a wheezing noise from the back of his throat. 

_Luna said it would be bad but… but this?!_

He ran his hands down his face slowly, watching with a bewildered expression as Blaise jabbered on excitedly about the Weasley twins’ attack on the great hall. Daphne seemed insistent on her part of the heist being a rather small one, a pink tint of embarrassment marring her cheeks.

_“Oh bloody hell…”_

Falling onto the nearest soft surface, Theo felt the onset of shock weigh heavily on his shoulders. Blaise reveled in chaos, and obviously didn't see (or ignored) the parts of this new situation that stood out like blood on marble to Theo. Rubbing his face, the tired teen contemplated the entire plan from start to finish, trying to discern what was making him so uneasy. One part of it stood out as particularly odd, and he bolted up from where he was laying to lock eyes with Daphne.

“Why.”

She raised a brow, “what?”

“Why would Granger just… _hand_ the time turner to you? Even if you were polyjuiced as Lavender Brown-it just doesn't make _sense.”_

She stiffened, glancing at the door as if considering if she could escape. Theo’s mind leapt into overdrive, going over the rushed explanation she had given them in a matter of seconds. He hissed in air through his teeth, blood draining from his face as he realized the most likely option.

“One of you cast imperious...”

“Theo-”

“Don't you ‘Theo’ me, Greengrass.” He jumped to his feet, stalking over to the girl as she reared up to defend herself, “you are aware that the unforgivables are-well, unforgivable. Right? You do understand that if you were caught it would have been a one way ticket to bloody _azkaban.”_

“Only if we got caught-”

“To hell with that! ‘If you got caught’ fuck off!” 

Shoving Blaise out of the way as the boy maneuvered to get between him and the glowering girl, Theo shoved his finger right in her face and hissed low and threatenly.

_“Do you have any idea how ssstupid of an idea that was?”_

She reared back as if slapped, eyes blown wide. Theo stuttered, realizing that his voice had an edge of parseltongue to it that he simply couldn’t explain or comprehend. They stood there in shocked silence till a large _boom_ made them all jump. 

“That sounds like it came from the ground floor.” Tracey was gripping his sleeve tightly, her voice shaking from the stress of the situation as she looked to the unchanged ceiling.

Daphne took that moment to speak up, “I _knew_ it would be stupid and risky if I-or any one of us-was to cast that spell, but Harry _insisted_ that he had a lot of experience with it, and I _trusted_ him not to _lie_ anymore.”

The dorm descended into chaos.

* * *

**Ten Minutes Earlier:**

Severus sighed tiredly, watching the pale face of Hermione Granger as the girl was settled down into a bed in the hospital wing. It had been a tense half hour of casting for both him and Poppy as they worked to save the girl’s life, but eventually her condition stabilized and the mediwitch felt comfortable moving her to the hospital wing.

Minerva seemed more affected emotionally by the event than anyone else had, perhaps because she had been leaned over the ledge enough to see the girl hit the ground, and was also being treated for shock in a private room at the end of the wing.

“I need some brandy.” Pomina came to his side, sighing incrementally as she gazed down at the shallowly breathing girl. Filius was still weaving his magic through the tower in the vane attempt to keep it standing, but Dumbledore didn't seem to have high hopes for it, and was instead sending professors up to the dorms with brooms to take the students belonging out before letting the entire structure collapse. 

He supposed it wasn't all bad, while the castle had been standing for nearly a thousand years, it had seen its fair share of wars and battles; magic had fixed that tower time and time again-and it would do the same tomorrow.

“I would happily join you, if it weren't for the spire about to come down.”

She laughed wearily, patting his arm as she moved away, “We'd best go search the rest of the wreckage before that happens then, eh?”

He grimaced, but followed after her. From eyewitness testimony, Granger and another Gryffindor named Lavender Brown were seen moving from the great hall just seconds before the Weasley twins’ siege. Those who had witnessed the conversation they had prior to that said that something had happened to Granger’s familiar, a cat named Crookshanks. However, not a single animal had been found in the wreckage so far, as all of the familiars were either not in the tower at the time or had fled once they smelt the unsteadiness of the tower. There was no sign of Lavender Brown either, giving credence to the idea that she had either escaped the tower on time and was hiding among the other students, or Sirius Black had kidnapped her.

Reaching the wreckage of the lower levels of Gryffindor tower, Severus made it just in time to watch Dumbledore levitate the last of the rubble away from the ground floor. Severus strengthened his occlumency walls as he neared the man, schooling his features incrementally.

“Did you find anyone, Headmaster?”

Dumbledore shook his head sadly at his question, confirming that Lavender Brown was indeed missing. Pomina sighed wearily, shaking her head with worry.

“The poor girl, I hope she’s simply hiding among the other gryffindors.”

The headmaster nodded sorrowfully, before looking back out at the carnage. “It certainly shows Black’s loss of sanity that he would go this far.”

Severus halted, realizing something in a moment of shocking clarity. Quickly excusing himself from the conversation, he marched the opposite direction from the pair, hearing an earth shattering _boom_ behind him as the remains of Gryffindor tower fell to the dirt after Filius let go of the spell.

He glared heatedly at nothing in particular as he marched purposely down to the dungeons. Everyone believed that the attack was executed by Black, as he was already well known for having a proclivity towards explosive spells, but Severus was unconvinced now. Black had the IQ of a toad stool, and would arrive drunk to his own mother's funeral just to kick up a fuss, but he would never be so brash as to demolish the tower of his own house. The man had been obnoxiously prideful of the red on his robes during school, and even if he had fallen back to the dark of his heritage, Severus simply couldn't comprehend the man tarnishing something he was so proud of in such a way.

Which, of course, meant that it was one of his slytherins.

Blaise Zabini was the first that came to mind, as Severus knew that the infernal child got on with the Weasley twins like a house fire, but he didn't take the Italian as one for blatantly attacking another house. Pranking it silver and green? Most definitely, but never something of this magnitude.

Besides, something this cataclysmic and well executed would require not only the right connections, but pure nerve, utter brilliance verging on genius, incredible magical strength, and a large amount of gold.

That left only one person.

His robes billowed as he stormed through the slytherin boy’s dorm hall, and he halted quite suddenly at the door of Theodore Nott’s room, hearing loudly arguing voices inside. Throwing open the door with a _bang,_ he looked out at the pale faces of four of the most bothersome children in his house.

“Where. Is. Potter.”

* * *

Deep in the confines of a boy's carefully enchanted trunk, a small square of purple silk slipped off of a crystal skull obediently, slithering out of the protective runes carved on top of a dresser and onto the floor. The skull pulsed once, and the incurved eyes started to glow faintly with light, the interior of the cranium filling with swirling magic. It pulsed once more, and a few wisps of gold and green light leaked from the reflective stone, swishing and rippling playfully through the air on an upward path to the outside world.

As the green and gold magic slipped through the enchantments on the trunk and into the free air, Draco Malfoy tightened his hold on Harry Potter and sniffled softly, cheeks tear stained and eyes heavy as he started to nod off. The wisps of death magic twined together and dipped through the air, floating along as if a feather on a gust of wind.

Lengthening out into a longer, singular string of light, the magic formed the outline of a snake, and slithered carefully across the chest of Harry Potter. The now firmly asleep Draco didn't notice as the snake of death magic slipped between Harry’s open lips and into his mouth, quickly disappearing down his throat.

As Severus Snape burst through the door to Theodore Nott’s dorm, the snake shrank and compressed into a worm of highly concentrated magic. It squirmed and dipped through the cracks of Harry’s fracturing mind on a direct course to his magical core. Tom Riddle watched it, eyes tired and cautious as it slithered straight into the boy's damaged soul.

Deep in the enchanted trunk, the skull pulsed a third-and final-time, as the purple silk swished hurriedly to cover it back up once more. Harry's core pulsed in unison with the crystal skull, and the painful gash along his soul caused by his magical outburst sutured shut as if nothing had ever happened. For a moment the quiet returned, and the room was filled with nothing but the soft breathing of the two boys as they slept.

That was until Harry’s eyes flew open, blown wide but unchanged except for a tinge of gold apparent around his pupils. 

**Magic can heal the soul, but not the mind.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to take yesterday off from updating to figure out exactly how to write this chapter, and I'm glad I did because I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  
> PS. the soul is synonymous with the magical core in this story.


	54. Convalesce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery of the soul // repressing of the mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be completely honest, I really struggled writing this one. On one hand it was really necessary to bridge a gap between last chapter and the next, but I also didn't want to make it some sort of hodge podge mini-chapter or something, so I rewrote it a good four times till I was happy with it.  
> Warning: torture, voldemort.

Sirius Black sat in the shrieking shack, staring straight ahead of him at a pudgy man tied up in a chair. The man was unconscious, and bleeding from a wound in his side-bite marks from his capture, Sirius assumed. Peter looked worse than he had expected, and it was obvious that the past twelve years as a rat had done the man no favors. Sirius had just finished setting up the anti-animagus runes around the property, and was now impatiently awaiting Peter’s return to the waking world, so that the real fun could start. His knee bounced, his dissatisfaction at the current inactivity obvious as he gripped his stolen wand tightly in one hand. The half-kneazle that helped him catch the rat sat purring at his feet, licking its paws and generally acting as a cat does. At first he had worried it might also be an animagus, but kneazles were unnaturally smart after all, so Sirius decided to take its cat behavior as a sign that it really was just an animal.

“Ughhh…”

Peter was making a rather pathetic attempt to wake up now, and Sirius was dully considering a more aggressive approach than just waiting patiently. His restlessness bordered on anxiety as his knee jumped in a steady rhythm, the stolen wand tapping against his chair. Glancing out of a broken window next to him, Sirius forced himself to calm down marginally, taking in the empty fields around the shack with sharp eyes, there wasn't a dementor in sight.

Sirius had been contemplating this moment as he roughed it out in the woods, hell-he had been considering just what he would say to Peter every day of his stay in azkaban. For the first few years he had considered just killing the bastard, but his contemplation turned far more spiritual the longer he stayed in the cell. He had started hallucinating one day, a hot day of summer where the black bricks of azkaban burned his skin unbearably hot, and he got blisters racing up and down his back from his skin cooking in the sun. The god of peace had stood before him, messy black hair and laughing hazel eyes greeting him like an old friend, robes of white and gold dancing in an invisible breeze. The god who looked like James Potter had told him that quiet execution of the accused was the only option if he seeked true revenge. Sirius had cried that day, wishing desperately for his brother as the sun bore down on his shoulders. The next day he had hallucinated once more, the blistering heat sticking sweat to his brow as the light played tricks with his failing mind. It had been the goddess of war this time, a woman of fiery red hair and angry green eyes who stood before him in blazing warrior regalia. A valkyrie of the sun gathering the souls of the fallen into her arms with a stern word of assurance. The goddess who looked just like Lily Evans had told him to kick the bastard’s ass.

Lily had always known best.

A chair scraping made Sirius turn jerkily, and he watched with glee as Peter unsuccessfully attempted to free himself from the thick ropes that held him. He hadn't even noticed the man had woken. Gripping the stolen wand he held tighter, the Black heir prepared for one hell of a performance.

“Petey!”

Pettegrew whipped his head up, eyes wide and nose twitching, “S-sirius! You-you escaped azkaban, I heard?”

The man seemed to want to play this off as a casual conversation between two old friends, and the azkaban escapee was more than willing to oblige. Sirius’ grin sharpened from friendly to hungry, and Peter squeaked, shoving himself back in the chair and falling to the floor, wiggling in a pathetic attempt to escape. 

Sirius laughed, an unhinged look in his eyes as he watched the rat wriggle.

“Ah, so you heard about that little jig? I have to say, it was far easier than I expected.”

Getting up from the window, he prowled forward and violently yanked the chair back up into a sitting position. His face nearly an inch away from the sniveling man, who tried to get as far away as he could with his limited movement.

“Do you know why I stayed so long in that _hell,_ Petey?”

Pettigrew blubbered, shaking his head and begged apologies. “I’m sorry-I’m sorry, Sirius please-”

“Well? DO YOU?!”

“I-I don’t! I don't!”

Sirius brought his arm back and punched Peter _hard_ across the face, sending the chair clattering to the floor once more. Huffing, he brought his foot back and kicked as hard as he could into the man's pudgy stomach, making Peter wheeze and beg even harder. Empty platitudes, it was too late for forgiveness.

Sirius took deep breaths, attempting to calm down marginally as the rat wriggled pathetically and sobbed.

“We’re so different, Peter. Do you know how?”

Getting down on his hands and knees, he lay parallel with the man's face and stared deep into his eyes.

“N-no.”

Sirius remembered baby Harry, just a little bundle in his arms breathing softly. Then he remembered hard green eyes and long legs. An undercurrent of danger palpable in the air, a silver tongue. Harry Potter had been robbed of the happiness he rightfully deserved, and Pettegrew was to blame for his new reality.

“I would rather _rot_ in _hell_ than even _think_ of betraying James and Lily. You know that, yes?”

A shaky nod from Peter. 

Sirius nodded as well, getting up off the floor as he did so, “Well, I did my time in azkaban-in hell-as penance for _ever_ suggesting you as secret keeper.”

He sniffed, gripping the back of the beat up chair and pulling it back into a sitting position one final time.

“Now, Peter, have you repented recently?”

Sobs were the only response.

“I'll take that as a no. Well! It's your lucky day then, mate. Now I'm no priest, but we can work something out, I'm sure.” 

Sirius’ smile was sharp, an unmistakable gleam of insanity in his eyes and he wiped his stolen wand forward, a cutting curse slashing deep into the flesh of Pettigrews left shoulder and upper arm, flaying the man’s arm to ribbons. He screamed out in pain as Sirius let out a laugh that sounded more howl than human.

“Now don't you worry Petey,” he cooed gently as he cast a concentrated bombarda into the man's other shoulder, watching with grim satisfaction as it exploded outwards, “I've got plenty of time, and we can make sure you feel closer than ever to your creator.”

He reached forward, his hand wiping a splatter of blood and a shard of bone off of the man’s cheek tenderly, teeth sharp and eyes fiery.

“No amount of prayer can save you from hell, Pettegrew.”

If anyone was close enough to hear inside of the shack, they wouldn't be able to discern the screams of pain from the howling winds. As it was, no one came anywhere close regardless.

* * *

“Where. Is. Potter.”

All argument in the room halted, and the third year students gazed back at him dumbly, all shocked at his sudden arrival, but smart enough to keep their mouths shut regardless. Snape glared out at the four, noting with distaste that each and every one of them were keeping their faces blank of nothing but their initial surprise at his arrival.

Slytherins were always so very hard to interrogate.

“If you don't tell me where that imbecilic child is you will all be getting very strongly worded letters sent home to your parents.”

None folded, and his gaze sharpened.

“I will only repeat myself once more-”

“I'm right behind you, professor.”

Snape whipped around, locking eyes with the tall boy as he came out of the dorm on the opposite wall. He blinked, acknowledging that yes, Harry Potter was certainly right behind him now. Gathering himself, the professor stepped backwards and schooled his features, instinctually unsettled by the boy's tone and stature. The third year’s eyes sharpened, and Snape felt a deep feeling of dread wash over him. The boy’s eyes were hard-too hard-and seemed to stare deeper than possible into his, as if they already knew all of his secrets and were content in waiting patiently for him to spill them all at his feet. Severus strengthened his occlumency walls subconsciously, straightening his spine into a ruler.

The staring contest was broken as the boy’s troublesome friends whispered to each other heatedly, continuing their argument in a quieter tone. Potter glanced over his shoulder to look at them curiously, and Snape took that moment of weakness to strike.

“Potter, why exactly did you blow up the gryffindor tower?”

Daphne Greengrass could be a hufflepuff on her loyalty alone, whipping around from where she was quietly fighting with Theodore Nott to defend in Potter’s fabricated innocence. “You have _no_ grounds to-”

“Quiet, Miss. Greengrass.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and the girl seethed, glaring at the back of his head indignantly as he turned back to Potter, who had yet to move from the door frame he had come from. The boy tilted his head, and Snape stiffened incrementally.

“I apologize professor,” his voice was like silk embroidered with malice, “but I have no recollection of ever blowing up or conspiring to blow up any section of Hogwarts at any time.”

The boy was too poised. Too regal as he answered questions as if batting flies. Severus felt the unease niggling at the back of his mind turn into thinly veiled distress, his instincts telling him to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. He felt cornered, as if being scolded by a more experienced adult in an area he was not knowledgeable in. The inferiority was something that he had only felt in the company of the dark lord, and the uncomfortably familiar feeling brought memories of blood red eyes to the forefront of his mind. He began edging away.

“May-may I ask where exactly you were during the Weasley twins’ siege on the great hall this evening?”

The boy raised an eyebrow, as if unimpressed with the question. Snape visibly recoiled this time.

“Sleeping, sir.”

Severus considered his options with shocking speed, the impossibly green eyes so unlike Lily Evans boring into his skull all the while. On one hand, him and the Potter spawn had been on relatively good terms through the past two years, and the boy had shown himself to be an exceptional student deserving of the praise people lavished him with. On the other hand, he was nearly positive that if Black hadn’t been the one who destroyed Gryffindor tower, it was somehow Potter’s handiwork, and Snape had no particular means to prove it besides his gut instincts unless he made the boy confess. There was, however, the current situation, where he was almost positive that Potter had either finally gone insane or was possessed in some way.

Choosing survival over spite, Snape nodded stiffly, “you would do well to keep a proper sleeping schedule, Potter.”

And then he fled, the idea of drinking himself into a coma with Pomona Sprout growing more and more tempting.

* * *

Tom let out a breath through Harry’s nose, slowly returning control to the the boy as he slunk back into his mindscape. Tom had been ready when Harry finally woke, and had quickly and efficiently wrangled control of his body from the boy before his erratic magic lashed out and attacked the sleeping Malfoy heir beside him. Tom had to then-once he heard the obnoxious drawl of Severus Snape in the hall-delve deep into his less enjoyable memories to adopt Voldemort’s mannerisms and overbearing personality once more. It wasn’t the best situation, and Tom felt that he was making a fool of himself all the while, but Snape didn't run from much except those more powerful than him, and Tom needed the meddling man out of Harry’s field of reference as fast as possible. He was far too observant.

_Harry, take control now._

The boy groaned, his head was _throbbing._ Shaking himself slightly, Harry opened his eyes to find his friends gaping rather obnoxiously at him. Theo was pale and looked on the verge of collapse, his artificial eye glowing faintly as if he was checking for anything external that could be wrong with Harry. Tracey and Blaise looked mostly confused, but Daphne had an expression of understanding on her face, seemingly deciding what had just happened for herself. Useful.

He gave her a wiry grin. “You're not the only actor among us, Daph.”

The girl in question whacked his arm, cussing him out quite profusely before hugging him tightly.

“You're reimbursing me for all the trouble you've put me through tonight, Potter.” 

He laughed, uncomfortable.

“Get off him you-”

Draco had awoken, it seemed. There was a rather forceful shove, and Daphne and Draco fell into a familiar argument quickly, pointing fingers and hissing threats. The others seemed to relax at the relatively normal display, and Blaise stumbled over to hug him as well. Tracey joined in quickly after, but Theo merely caught his eyes, sending him a _we’re talking about this later_ look. Harry nodded in response, patting Tracey’s head as she pulled away and started babbling on about just what the weasley twins had gotten up to in the great hall.

Harry looked to Draco carefully, noting with slight worry how his hands shook and his eyes glanced every few seconds to Harry. Something had happened that scared the boy.

Tom was muttering something about cleaning up the ruins, and Harry mentally winced at the carnage of his mindscape. His occlumency barriers were somehow still holding strong, but the mental Hogwarts was in tatters, and some parts would have to be completely rebuilt. He could hardly remember what had happened, but if it was bad enough to warrant this much carnage, then it had to have been life changing.

_This isn't even the worst of it._

_What else is there?_

_That_ _imbecilic brute of a creature is up in the headmaster office, tearing the place to shreds._

Harry didn't need to take the plunge into his mindscape to confirm that the wendigo was indeed destroying the office, and seemed intent on eradicating every last hint of Albus Dumbledore in the room.

_Leave it, I don't see any harm in what it's doing._

_Well, sure, but what of when it gets bored and needs to prance through the castle? I do live here you know._

_We’ll worry about that later._

Blaise was still hugging him, and Harry pat the boy’s back comfortingly. This was the first time Blaise had shown any sort of emotions besides sarcasm and anger towards him in two months, and Harry decided that he must be forgiven for his misdeeds.

“I’m sorry for keeping secrets, mate.”

Blaise snorted, “I'm sorry too, I was acting childish.”

Tracey huffed, butting into the conversation with a look of superiority on her face. “Honestly, both of you were.”

Harry managed to last the next hour with his friends as they all talked over themselves to try and clue him in on the moments he had missed from the evening-complete with Theo and Daphne’s ongoing fight and the possibility of the Weasley twins being expelled. All the time though Harry only half paid attention. He felt disjointed, and was barely able to register that he had apparently blown up the entire bloody gryffindor tower in his haste to remove it from his field of comprehension. 

As they finally started to settle into bed, Draco had seemed to want to say something, but when Harry prodded him about it the shorter boy said it was nothing and rolled over in his bed, a wing curled over himself as the other stretched out off the bed. Harry accepted this with a quiet apology for scaring him and settled down as well, blowing out the candle on his nightstand. It didn't make either of them feel any better.

It wasn't till three hours later that Harry was finally able to start processing things, his eyes staring blankly at his canopy as he took in the destruction of his mindscape. His library of memories was in tatters, and the important ones from his time in the gryffindor tower were missing, supposedly being held captive by the wendigo still wreaking havoc. Harry secretly didn't mind that he couldn't remember what had happened that night, the feelings associated with the time were still his to comprehend and he didn't enjoy them in the slightest.

_The entire bloody tower… no wonder Snape was so pissed._

_He was likely just jealous he hadn't managed it while he was in school, I know I am._

It didn't feel right, like he had changed something irrevocably in those moments of anguish, is this what Fate had planned for him?

_I blew up the gryffindor tower._

It was an incredible show of utter, incomprehensible, insensible idiocy-how did he manage to make something as small as the gryffindor common room into something so big to warrant a reaction of that magnitude? Utter idiocy, he should be better- _was_ better than that.

Harry felt strange, out of place in his own body. There was a tightness in his chest that still lingered after the initial event, and as he came down from the adrenalin high that had woken him up in the first place-Harry felt empty. He could still attribute his scatter-brainedness to his partially destroyed mindscape, but this settling feeling of nothingness felt inescapable, as if it was a new and instrumental fixture in his life that he couldn't dare escape.

From across the room, Harry heard Draco shift, mumbling something indistinguishable under his breath. He smiled softly at the noise, settling deeper into his covers and mentally sorting through the mess of his memories. He would fix everything with Tom over the next few days, and once the wendigo finally designed to return his memories he would face them head on. How bad could they be?

The inescapable darkness in his chest still lingered.

* * *

That night was a rough one for Gryffindor house, as the students gathered with sleeping bags in the great hall, having no tower to return to. Lavender Brown was still missing, presumed kidnapped after a headcount confirmed that she was not among the students. (Harry had grown rather fond of his new pocket watch, and had decided to keep it.) Hermione Granger’s condition was stable if dire, and Madam Pomfrey was not positive that the girl's left leg would survive, having been almost completely crushed under falling debris. 

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was insistent on not contacting the girl's parents until the mediwitch was positive the girl would have lasting medical effects on her person. Pomfrey obeyed her employer dutifully, as she always had, and returned to the hospital wing to tend to her patent. Minerva McGonagall slept till the early morning, waking with the sun. She took her coffee black and returned to grading papers and preparing for the school day, a hard set to her jaw the only indication that she was at all affected by the previous night's events. 

The gryffindor tower was in shambles for two more nights after that, until the ministry sent in a team of able bodied professionals to rebuild it from the inside out. Gryffindor house moved back in on the first wednesday of November, with the exception of two of its members. Hermione Granger was in a medically induced coma, her wounds far too close to being fatal to risk movement from the girl if she woke. Several search parties were sent out to the forbidden forest in the hopes of finding Sirius Black or Lavender Brown, but nothing was found. If anyone was to search the shrieking shack, they would find the horribly mangled corpse of a man already presumed dead for over a decade. Sadly, the only one to venture into the shack was Remus Lupin, who would not be returning there for almost another month, as the full moon was on the twenty ninth that November. Funnily enough, the only thing the search parties managed to find was the centaur pack, who swore to their stars that if Sirius Black was anywhere in the forest, he would have been dead by their hands the second he stepped foot into the woods.

Harry Potter paid little to no attention in his classes, as he usually did, and instead stared blankly off into the middle distance, as if somewhere else. Most of his friends watched him closely with growing alarm as he became less and less present as the days dragged on, seemingly attempting to escape reality whenever an option presented itself for him to do so. The boy had strange bouts of lucidity however, in which he grew cold and hostile as he completed assigned work with shocking speed, writing essays in a flowing script that was not his own. Severus Snape began avoiding the boy like the plague whenever these changes in personality occurred, and was often seen downing hangover-relief potions each morning at breakfast. 

Harry’s condition continued to worsen as the days went on, it all coming to a head one day when Draco woke early in the morning to find that the boy was not in his bed, the covers thrown messily about and deep gashes as if an animal ripped it apart.

**Forgetting leads to remembering. Remembering leads to repeating.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is going to finally have some progress timeline-wise. I honestly didn't expect for the Third Year Halloween arc (as I've dubbed it) to go on for three chapters, but here we are.


	55. Sequelae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery is not an upward slope. Regression is always an unfortunate possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of gore, detailed descriptions of medical amputation.

Harry was having trouble focusing.

In fact, he had noticed that ever since halloween he had been unable to focus onto anything happening in the present, always seeming to fuzz out of conscientiousness, only refocusing back in when Draco shook him or Tracey pinched his hand. He went to bed the first Friday of November and immediately appeared in his mindscape, which was steadily getting worse and worse as the week dragged on. Harry sighed, wishing it was safe for Tom to speak to him in person.

While his breakdown on halloween had destroyed much of his memory library, and a good portion of everything else, the issues had been negligible and fixed within a few days. However, the wendigo was becoming a larger problem than he had originally anticipated, destroying his mind faster than he could fix it. The spirit was agitated and aggressive, attacking anyone that came within reach of it, as well as forcing a winter blizzard into being and covering everything in ice. The creature could control weather, yes, but its ability to make it snow in his mind was negatively affecting his focus and much of everything else, the fuzziness he experienced benign due to this mental blizzard. Tom was no longer able to converse with Harry either, as the wendigo considered him a foreign threat and had attempted on several occasions to break into the chamber in an effort to attack him. 

To be rather blunt, Harry’s mind was freezing over, and he couldn't do a thing about it.

Opening his eyes, Harry looked up at the towering creature that stood before him. It clutched his memory of that halloween night in one hand- refusing to hand it over regardless of his pleading.

“Please stop this.”

His mother’s cries, a familiar old man's sigh, and his own screams were the answer.

The wendigo was using vocal mimicry as a way to communicate, and Harry hadn't understood that at first, thinking it was just toying with him. After trying to communicate with it constantly for that event week however, he quickly realized it was using sounds from his own memories to explain its emotions to him.

“I can't function with my mind like this, my friends are worried.”

Long, yellowed claws reached up from where they brushed against the snowy earth, piercing the skin of his collarbone gently as a hunched spine dipped further, concaving unnaturally as a warm tongue dripped icey saliva on his face.

Harry was freezing.

“Let me remember, _please,_ even if it kills me, I need to know.”

He hasn't felt this cold in a long, long time. Harry took a deep breath, shivering.

The claws lowered, scratching a deep gash into his chest. His blood crystallized instantly when exposed to the icy chill. He couldn't even feel it.The snow was up to his upper thighs, his shoulders and back caking on more and more of it as the blizzard became more and more aggressive. He was blacking out in his own mind.

Harry wasn't prepared for this, simply couldn't comprehend the power this spirit wielded, he wasn’t old enough or strong enough yet.

He realized then, in a moment of harsh clarity, that the wendigo had dropped the memory gently into his outstretched hands. He looked down at it with growing horror, thoughts and feelings and sharp glass tearing into him like claws made of ice.

His mother sobbed, the demon lunged.

* * *

Saturday came with the first snow, and Harry woke up early that morning, finding himself sprawled out under a grove of twisted trees deep in the Forbidden Forest. Memories came back to him with harsh clarity, and a tree close to him cracked straight in half along with them, his magic reacting to the memory in a muted but still destructive way.

**_Weakness._ **

**_Fear._ **

**_Cowardice._ **

_He was a child. A terrified, beaten, broken little boy with big green eyes, only still breathing because he needed to live just long enough to die by the right hands at the right time._

_Who am I. Who was I. Who should I have been?_

_Harry realized, in a horrible moment of clarity, that his second life hadn't even begun-not really. He was still the same scared little boy from his first, with the only difference being the removal of compulsions and potions and the addition of a few stronger players in his corner, but he hadn't changed. He simply couldn't._

_Harry couldn't become anything more than Dumbledore’s pawn till the man saw fit to finally keel over and die._

_An unearthly howl ripped through his mind, a demon screeching out in anger and hatred. He tunneled, focusing onto that animalistic side and gripping it with both hands, grasping at the strong, powerful wendigo and begging to be made indestructible. Begging to become untouchable._

_When he had met with Luna in September, in the astronomy tower, Harry had been on the cusp of this destruction, of finally realizing that nothing separated his first and last life because he was still the same, that he was still trapped in a chess game as nothing but a lowly pawn; but he had held the fracturing pieces together with tape and glue and sheer determined ignorance. He had turned his back on the truth-had locked it up in the recesses of his mind to be ignored and allowed the wounds to fester and grow more destructive and deep than they would have been before._

_Now though, the lock he had placed was broken, and Harry dug deeper into himself, trying to escape the pain and anguish and_ **_weakness._ ** _Wanting desperately to just stop feeling._

_The entire room exploded outwards._

_He didn't want to see it anymore, didn't want to see the prison of his first life and the ghost of his second. He didn't want to see the taint-the vile, twisted cage-that had kept him willingly compliant for much of his life._

**_Martyr._ **

**_Sacrifice._ **

**_Tool._ **

**_That's all you are, Harry Potter, a tool in the hand of a more worthy being._ **

Harry gasped for air, the pain in his body and the agonizing feelings of his memories resurfacing doing nothing but overwhelming him. Turning onto his side, Harry coughed, droplets of blood splattering onto the inch of snow he laid on. His head thumped against the freezing ice, breathing unsteady as he gulped down air. Everything hurt, it was so very reminiscent of his first transformation that he knew instantly what had happened.

“Ughhhhhh… _fuck.”_

He coughed again, spitting a mix of mucus and blood into the warming snow as he hacked up something foul that was lodged in his throat. He ached horribly, the bone deep soreness from his first transformation coming back full force, though the demon seemed to have found food this time. Harry coughed again, his mouth hanging open as he continued to clear the horrid taste of organs from his mouth and throat. He felt on the verge of vomiting, and in a fit of slight panic grabbed a handful of snow, shoving it into his mouth and chewing roughly. It cleared up a bit of the taste of death from his mouth, and he grabbed several more handfuls in an attempt to tamp down his nausea. 

Calming down eventually, he was able to steady himself and think rationally. Turning onto his back once more, Harry laid there in a heap pitifully for a time, his breathing slowly steadying. He listened to the morning birds with a feeling of tired acceptance-this was bound to happen eventually, it was simply bad timing that his mind was also in a dilapidated state before and during it. Thinking back, he remembered now how he had practically begged the spirit to take control and fix everything. No wonder it had stolen his memories, his go-to defense mechanism was to simply forget the pain.

_Yea, this isn't happening today._

“Death, a little help please?”

Death materialized into being, glare prominent in his eyes as he looked down on Harry with thinly veiled frustration. The god’s clothes were askew and leaves had invaded his perfectly quaffed hair. He looked about ready to destroy something, whether it be a tower or an entire universe. They made eye contact, and a glimmer of sympathy shone through the anger.

“Rough night?” 

Regardless of his current state, Harry still found it in him to sass the death god, deciding that violence was his mood of the day. Athimus didn’t seem to even hear him, gold-green eyes hyper-fixated onto Harry as he aggressively smoked a cig.

There was a beat of silence as Death narrowed his eyes further into slits, before he finally ran out of cigarette to smoke and dropped the butt, crushing it underfoot as he stomped over to Harry.

“Do you have any idea-shut up,” Harry's mouth clicked shut, “-do you have any idea how difficult it is to obliviate an _entire_ herd of centaurs while they are in the process of hunting down a large ice demon?” 

Harry really hoped that was a rhetorical question, as he stared at the god wide-eyed. What the _fuck_ had happened last night?

“Uh… not particularly.”

Death’s eye twitched, “Really. Fucking. Hard.”

“Well it couldn't have been that hard, you are a god after all.” Harry laughed nervously, not really liking the look the god was leveling at him, “...well I'm not really the one you should be mad at either was, it's not like I can control the thing!”

The look increased in intensity, and Harry would have been running in the other direction if he could move, “look kid, I get that this is new for you, but-shut up-you do have a natural domination over the wendigo, don't let it walk all over you.”

Harry felt like he was being scolded, “You're joking! You have seen the state of my mind at the moment, yes? It attacked me during a time of weakness!”

Death rolled his eyes, dropping to the snow in front of him and lighting another cigarette. “No offense kid, but you've always been a wreck, despite being impressively good at hiding it-even from yourself.” Harry pulled a face. “-but it's still _your_ mind, and you control what affects it or not. Actually-not everything, but-well, you get the idea.”

“I don't, actually.”

The death god stood suddenly, looking relatively fed up and considerably exhausted, “you know what? Fine, call me when you’re done being a brat.”

“Oi! Wait-and… you're gone.” Harry sighed, grumbling something along the lines of ‘bastard gods think they’re above me’ and attempted to remove himself from the clutches of gravity.

Despite the pain in his… everything, Harry managed to roll over onto his stomach again and groan pitifully for a few more minutes, feeling like utter horseshit. It took another excruciating half hour for him to muster up the energy just to slump up against the nearest tree, and by that time the first rays of sunlight were peaking out of the leaves. 

“You seem to be in quite the predicament, son of darkness.”

“For fu-piss _off_ Bane.”

The centaur in question preceded forward instead, picking up a pair of bloodied antlers from the dirt.

“These are not ordinary deer antlers, would I be correct in assuming that you have been possessed?”

Harry got himself into a better position against the tree, pressing his cheek into the smooth bark with a grunt, “‘m not possessed.”

Bane shook his head mournfully, “it is a sad day when one is unable to fully meld with their inner beast. It was most certainly possession, son of darkness, a transformation such as this is not meant to be uncontrollable or painful of any sort.”

That made Harry pause his efforts to stand, thinking very carefully about the centaur’s words. The goal of his creature inheritance was to one day have his human and wendigo sides melded into one, so it made a certain amount of sense that as he was separated from it currently, the shift would put him through a great deal of pain. He supposed that it must be similar to the difference between werewolves and animagus, as werewolves lost their human minds in a painful transformation while animagus didn't. The goal seemed to be to start with the mind and shifting patterns similar to that of a werewolf and end with abilities more akin to an animagus.

“Well that's certainly very unfortunate for me but, sadly, I can't do much to fix it.”

Bane seemed like he wanted to say something, but decided against it, “do you wish for my assistance? I can retrieve a soothing balm from the herd if it would ease your suffering.”

Harry grumbled a ‘fuck, yes please’ as he grappled with gravity and uncooperative muscles. The centaur nodded (though Harry couldn't see from his position) and galloped back off into the brush, leaving the Potter heir to his lonesome once more.

Collapsing back into the snow, Harry settled to simply wait for Bane and hope no one came along to find him napping in a snowy clearing surrounded by unknown organs and considerably underdressed.

“Mr. Potter… what on earth are you doing out here.”

Harry was having a _very_ bad morning, it seemed, and turned to glare hatefully at Snape, who was standing a yard away with a weary look.

“Sleeping, obviously.”

Tom confided in him that Snape was not-so-subtly terrified of him currently, and likely wouldn’t say a thing about this to Dumbledore just on principle, but as Harry was in a position of considerable suspicion regardless of the man's fear, he would likely have to obliviate the professor regardless.

Snape seemed torn between scolding Harry for his cheek, or hightailing it out of there as fast as his disused legs could carry him. All the blood standing stark against the snow was probably leaning him more towards the latter.

“... In the snow?”

Harry grunted, shifting into what could be considered a sitting position and contemplating his options. Telling the truth was immediately eliminated, but most of the lies he could come up with were shoddy at best and obviously made up at worst. 

Ignorance it was, “I suppose so sir, as I went to bed in my dorm and woke up out here.”

Snape looked down at Harry’s legs, grimacing at them worriedly. Harry didn't bother looking, he was 95% bruise at this point, his legs were probably pure purple. 

“Were you mauled, perchance?”

Harry was actually the one who had done the mauling, and was tempted to do it again-no sharp claws necessary-if only his muscles were more cooperative. As it was, he wasn't in a good enough state to do much other than grouch at the man while lying in a heap on the ground.

“Potter, I asked you a question.”

“Well, bully for you sir.”

Snape appeared flummoxed, a strange cross between wanting to instinctively snark back and being utterly confused with how his morning could have possibly taken this turn; in all fairness, Harry felt similarly about his entire life, and could certainly sympathize with the man. Harry heard the galloping of horse hooves distantly, and sighed in relief, glad that Bane would be returning with the balm soon. Snape was much less comforted. Whipping around, he wrenched his wand from a secret pocket in his robes, pointing it haphazardly in random directions.

“Oh calm down, the centaurs like me.”

“Those beasts don't like anyone, now stay _still,_ Potter.” Snape hissed through his teeth, eyes darting through the trees in an effort to catch movement of the ‘beasts’. Harry rolled his eyes, wincing as he shifted against the tree he leaned on. This would be a phenomenal time to obliviate the man while he was distracted, but Harry didn't have his wand and couldn't muster up the magic from his reserves to summon it.

_Blast._

The day couldn't get much worse really, that was one plus he supposed. Though... Harry grimaced, Fate could always one-up herself given the proper motivation, best not jinx it. Settling back to watch, Harry felt a small repreve from watching Snape spin around like a buffoon, eyes darting from suspicious bush to slightly shady patches of trees, as if Voldemort himself was going to jump out of the bushes and attack them. 

“Good morrow, prince with half blood.”

Harry wheezed out a laugh as Snape’s eyes narrowed in on Bane, who looked all too pleased with himself. It was an interesting twist on the self-appointed title, that was for certain, and Harry wondered if Snape would consider hunting down his old potions textbook just to change it.

“Centaur… stay where you are.”

Harry made an effort to stop laughing, as it disturbed his ribs somewhat, and was now eyeing the circular container in Bane’s hand greedily.

“Don't be shy mate, hand it on over.”

Snape looked as though he was either going to throttle Harry or leave him for dead as Bane trotted up to the boy, who took the paste with only mild difficulty. Harry had no idea what to do with it, and decided to rub a bit of it on his exposed thigh to see what would happen. It began soothing the muscles of his leg instantly, the bruises fading into nothingness. He quickly got to work slathering it on the most pained portions of his body. Snape watched him with wary eyes, seemingly trying to figure out what sections of this situation that were beyond his circle of knowledge, and having rather pitiful results it seemed, going off his constipated expression.

Bane pawed the dirt, taking back what was left of the balm from a considerably less pained Harry, who watched with mild interest as his skin soaked up the silky substance till there was none of it left.

“I ask that you make a considerable effort not to become possessed again, son of darkness.”

Grimacing, Harry jutted his chin pointedly in Snape’s direction, as the man became considerably more invested in eavesdropping on the conversation. This was turning rather quickly from a ‘probably have to obliviate Snape’ situation into a ‘definitely have to obliviate Snape’ situation. Harry was counting the seconds till he had enough magic in the tank to wandlessly summon the elder wand, and prepared for dodging uncomfortable questions till then.

Bane seemed to realize belatedly that what he just said was likely not the best thing to remark in the presence of a Hogwarts professor, and gave Harry an apologetic look before galloping back into the woods.

_I'm going to shoot that bastard in the leg next archery lesson, just for the mess he’s left for me to clean up._

Harry studied Snape’s expression with growing impatience. If the man was going to take this long to start questioning him, then either Tom had been doing better to scare him than Harry originally expected, or the man was just particularly stupid in anything besides potions and being an annoyance. Harry was in a bad mood, so he was leaning more and more towards the latter. 

On Severus Snape’s end, several things were going through his mind as he tried not to look at the bloodied teen before him. The centaur’s words lended the child to being possessed by some sort of evil spirit, and with his uncomfortably familiar personality lately as well as the spacey behavior lended Potter to being possessed by Voldemort, which was a serious cause for alarm. While usually Snape would have gone running to Dumbledore a week ago about his worries, that would have forced him to explain why exactly he had interrogated the boy in the first place, which would open up several unsavory avenues for the headmaster to travel. Hell, the only reason the boy hadn't been forced into a red tie was the sorting hat’s insistence that gryffindor wouldn’t survive with the Potter heir among their ranks (what Dumbledore had taken that to mean was that the boy was so Slytherin that he would taint the house’s virtues. Snape eventually realized that it meant the little demon would kill every last one of the lions within the first few hours).

Regardless, the boy seemed lucid at the moment, and not at all Voldemort-esque, so all that was left was to carefully move him from the bloody snow he sat on to a private place to rest, preferably far away from Madam Pomfrey and her casual breaches of patent confidentiality.

The boy had been indignant about the idea of being swaddled up in Snape’s coat like a baby and carried through the school, but it was necessary to get him safely back to his dorm. Potter gripped and whined from underneath the thick fabric as he was floated along by Snape through the empty halls, seeming quite bothered with the idea of being indisposed.

Upon reaching the dorms, Snape sighed heavily at the panicking Draco Malfoy, who was near cardiac arrest as he grasped at Potter’s torn bed sheets.

“Mr. Malfoy, if you would design to not further ruin already destroyed bedsheets, I shall return your companion to his bed once he has been convinced to take a soothing bath.”

It took far more convincing than would be expected, but eventually a cleaned Harry Potter was swaddled up once more, this time with a considerably stressed Draco Malfoy keeping watch to make sure he didn’t run off. 

Severus needed a drink-no, not just a drink, he needed to rob a distillery.

* * *

The hospital wing was a hellscape of perfectly pressed, threadbare sheets and a strange smell of sanitizing spells mixed with an underlying taste of iron in the air that never truly left. Madam Poppy Pomfrey darted around one particular side of the room, preparing for a very necessary amputation. Hermione Granger’s leg was far too gone to save-despite her efforts to save it over the last week-and Madam Pomfrey planned to amputate it at the knee in precisely ten minutes. 

As she carefully set up the proper potions and carving tools for the job, the mediwitch jolted down a quick note to the headmaster, warning him that the girl’s parents would need to be notified of her condition now that it was proven to be dire. Signing the parchment, she sent it off with one of the school owls and sighed, picking up one of her smaller tourniquets and preparing for the amputation.

Sanitizing the area just above the girls knee of the girls left leg, Pomfrey slipped on the tourniquet and began tightening it, stopping only when she was sure the tightness was optimal for stopping most of the blood flow, but not enough to injure the blood vessels that would remain after the amputation. Assured that the leg was properly walled off and the girl wouldn’t bleed to death, Pomfrey gathered her wits and grasped the medical scalpel off of the tray next to her. Settling in, she began cutting away at the skin, patting down the wound with a cloth as some blood bubbled to the surface.

While your typical mediwix would turn up their nose at using muggle techniques for any sort of solution, Poppy Pomfrey was a halfblood whose mother had been the daughter of a world renowned muggle heart surgeon, and the woman had insisted she got a muggle medical degree in some respect. What Poppy had realized during her college experience was that magical operations had the goal of ‘getting all the bad stuff out willy nilly and dealing with the repercussions with magic’. Which, sure, was a fine strategy when you had the resources and magical power to fix any internal bleeding or organ damage you inflict on your patent by using cutting curses to remove their liver, but a school mediwitch most certainly did NOT have that kind of salary.

Therefore, Madam Pomfrey settled into her muggle teachings for most of the surgeries she occasionally had to perform.

Reaching for another, thicker knife, she prepared to cut through the muscle. Due to the many staircases in the school, she expected that most of her students had fairly strong leg muscles, but was surprised to find that Miss. Granger had particularly well-traveled ones, almost as if she ran about twice as much as the other students.

_Likely due to that time-turner nonsense, no doubt._

Time-turners would do well to have an age requirement on them, in her humble opinion, as whenever a student was given one, it almost always landed them in the hospital wing to be treated for stress. 

Nodding at her handy work, she grappled for her medical saw and began sawing at the bone that had finally been revealed, careful not to agitate anything in the process. It was delicate work, and much _much_ more efficient than the magical way of doing amputation, which could be made far more effective by the simple use of _anesthesia._

Madam Pomfrey had many qualms about how magicals went about their medical treatments, but supposed it was none of her business what others did. That was a fatal flaw of the woman, and a very good reason Albus Dumbledore hired her. For all Poppy Pomfrey’s brilliance, she never once thought to butt into anything. If her employer requested that compulsions be placed on an infant, she would oblige. If a girl needed medical care of the standards of St. Mungo’s, but the Headmaster insisted she be the only to treat her, then the mediwitch would wash her hands and tie a smock around her waist. If a child was obviously abused, she would make note of it in her ledger and never say a word.

Waving her wand, she vanished the now completely removed leg, mumbling suturing spells under her breath as the stump was stitched up, and quickly wrapped in healing potion soaked bandages. The girl could likely get a believable prosthetic if she wanted, but she would have to heal from the other severe wounds and be purged of the draught of the living death that raced through her system first. Considering her job done, Madam Pomfrey looked up to see that the owl had returned. Taking the note from its beak, she read that the Headmaster wished to wait for the girl to wake till notifying her parents. Shrugging, the mediwitch jolted down a few notes on the girl's condition into her ledger and started cleaning up the bloodied tools around her.

Madam Poppy Pomfrey was a brilliant doctor, of that there was no doubt, but she horribly inept in helping people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit more lighthearted, and helped transition from the Halloween Arc to the rest of the story, and also started hinting at the winter break, which won't be coming up for a ways, but foreshadowing is a superior literary device like that.  
> (no, I won't tell you what is foreshadowing and what isn't, the ambiguity is half the fun)  
> Also, if anyone's pissed off at the Madam Pomfrey bashing this chapter has, just note that on the Harry Potter wiki she is consistently noted to not ask questions even if they would be important in helping someone heal and just doing her job o questions asked, I'm working off of her own characterization with this one.  
> PS. Can you guess what the wendigo was saying with those three particular sounds?


	56. We Didn't Start the Fire pt.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions rise as hormones, creature inheritances, and incomplete soul-bonds clash dangerously.  
> The smell of death overwhelms everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok people, I've been peer pressured into giving everyone a nice, angst free chapter today.  
> (lmao just kidding, that's not how we do things here. Now let's commit some arson, shall we?)  
> Warning: depictions of rotting corpses, mentions of torture.

Life went on, with the only notable change being Harry’s more constant lucidity and Draco’s ever increasing levels of stress. The short boy was constantly and consistently at Harry’s side, gripping the outer sleeves of his school uniform as if he was the only thing keeping Harry from running off to do something stupid that would no doubt make a mess of things. 

In all honesty, he wasn’t that far off in his assumption.

The first Hogsmeade visit of the year landed on the 20th of November, a Saturday that showed the full effect of winter on the school, with snowfall glancing of long eyelashes and temperatures ever dropping. Harry didn't bother wearing a jumper, settling instead for his trademark leather jacket that he had finally stolen back from Theo and a thin, distressed band t-shirt. His friends, alternatively, wore a good five layers and a frankly obnoxious amount of warming charms.

“You'll let me have that jacket of yours if I get too cold, yea?”

Blaise, seemingly trying to one-up Harry, was wearing a single black turtleneck and thin-looking black slacks, seemingly trying to blend in with the shadows. If that was his intention, the aggressive shivering was doing his stealth no favors. However, if it was an aesthetical choice, he appeared to be thoroughly regretting it by the time they had passed their permission slips off to Flitch and gotten onto the carriages.

“Why? So you can get away with being an idiot by profiting off my ingenuity?”

Draco snorted from under his scarf, his mittened hand fisting the thick leather of Harry's right arm sleeve. “Live with your hubris or die, Zabini.”

The Italian grouched about English weather for the entire ride, tempting Harry closer and closer towards more murderous exploits. As it was, Draco’s hold on his jacket was the only thing keeping him from at the very least lunging across the carriage to knock some decorum into the snooty boy. 

Harry had certainly become more lucid after his ‘conversation’ with the wendigo, but that didn't mean he was in a particularly good mood now, as he had been feeling rather irritable ever since Snape had forced him into bed-rest on the first Saturday of the month. Ever since that day, the professor had been annoying and nosey, always watching him closely and jumping at any hint of strange behavior or whatever it was he seemed keen on watching for. Harry was starting to appreciate Tom’s interference with the man less and less as the days dragged on.

The only plus side of the past week was that Granger was still stuck in a medically induced coma, and would stay that way for the foreseeable future. He was much more comfortable showing off in class without her there to make a fuss about him ‘cheating’, and the teachers seemed to appreciate the peace and quiet from her insesnt showing off just as much as the students (though none of them would ever admit to that due to their professional positions as her professors, though the only way Snape could get any more obvious about his obvious pleasure was if he wore around a sign with the words ‘Hermione Granger deserves to get her mouth sewn shut’ painted boldly across it). 

There were always downsides to these things however, as the girl’s absence seemed to snap Weasley into high gear, as Granger was a good 85% of his impulse control. It was a feat in itself that Harry had managed to keep Draco on a tight enough leash to make sure he didn't maul the ginger, and an incredible act of self control to not do the mauling himself.

As it was, Harry felt that he had reason enough to have a short fuse.

On the part of short fuses, Draco seemed to become less and less held together as the days went on, and Harry was concerned the young teen would eventually snap and set fire to something-likely a big something, if he was going off the sparks dancing across the boy’s exposed skin. Harry could attribute a good portion of Draco’s stress to his own, as while they did seem to have a soul-bond, it had been only fully realized on Harry’s side. This led Draco to naturally be a bit of a mess, which alarmed Harry incredibly, but he had no discernable way of fixing the problem, as he wasn't entirely sure why Draco wasn't just accepting the bond in the first place. Perhaps he didn't actually know about it? If that were the case, his parents were either making a considerable effort not to let him know (and considering their track record on keeping important things from their son, Harry really couldn't put it past them), or the Malfoys had never found it prudent to get the boy a bloody inheritance test. 

Harry grumbled at that idea, he had talked to both Theo and Daphne about that particular possibility (without actually bringing up soulmates in Daphne’s case) and got similar answers: it was ridiculous to even think that the Lord or Lady of a family would ever hand an heir ring off to their child without being absolutely certain that said child was even magically in line for the bloody  _ title!  _ Daphne had quite a bit to say about the Malfoys in general-most of it being quite bad-and regarded the idea of them potentially not getting an inheritance test done on their son to be an insight far worse than joining with Voldemort. Harry considered this a bit of an over exaggeration, and Theo did indeed prove to be better equipped at handling an impartial view of the prospect.

_ “The Malfoy line is infamous for always producing male children, there hasn't been a female Malfoy to actually be born to the line since 1397. It has to do with an ancient blood enchantment one of the original Malfoys put on their bloodline when the family crossed over from France into Ireland, likely put in place to make sure that their family would always produce viable male offspring.” _

_ Theo shifted slightly in the library seat, his mismatched eyes boring into Harry’s skull. “I would say that the Malfoys have only got to keep this blood enchantment in their system for so long is because once it finally became public knowledge-which was long after blood enchantments became illegal-the magic was already weaved into their genetic code, and therefore irreversible.” _

_ He looked back down at his book for a moment, contemplating something before setting it aside. “Due to this, the wedding vows that keep two people intertwined in marriage also recognize the ancient magic in a Malfoy’s blood, and naturally work with the enchantments to weed out any potential adultery. If a woman wed to a Malfoy man falls pregnant with another’s child, the offspring is female, no matter what. Many cheating wives have been found out that way, so it truly is a tried and true method in assuring just which heirs are bastards or not.” _

Harry had been enthralled by the concept, and it explained perfectly why Draco’s parents likely never bothered with an inheritance test. Since Draco was male, there was no possibility that he wasn’t the heir, so there was no reason to seek confirmation from the goblins.

He jolted as the carriage stopped abruptly, being pulled from his thoughts. Shaking his head, he quickly moved to get out of the cramped space. Hopping down to the snow, he turned to see Draco was the next one to get out. Moving instinctively, he grabbed Draco from under his arms and hoisted him to the ground as well, finding it rather easy due to the height and weight difference. Harry didn't realize this was probably the wrong way to go about things until Blaise started laughing and Draco kicked his shin, hard.

“Oi!”

“Prat.”

Harry rubbed his leg, questioning expression on his face as the shorter boy blushed horribly. “What’d I do?”

A smack on the back of the head from Daphne was the only answer, and he stumbled after the already moving group as they started on a stroll through the town. Draco got over his anger quickly enough and grabbed for Harry’s sleeve again, grumbling about giants and muscles or something.

Hogsmeade was just as brilliant as he remembered it being from his last life, and Harry took a well deserved sigh of relief as his rag-tag group of friends moseyed along the cobbled streets. Tracey darted ahead a few yards to window shop, snooping into the shops through fogged up glass and trying to discern what secrets each one held. She would then spot something outrageously expensive, sprint back to the group, and try to beg each of the richer heirs among them into buying it for her. With not much luck, she would then return and start the cycle all over again.

Blaise was seemingly looking for someone, eyes glancing around to each huddled up group of Hogwarts students. Harry's eyes narrowed, the boy’s gaze seemed to linger on Hufflepuffs especially, was he looking for someone?

“Harry! Oh Harry there was such a lovely little matching set of earrings and necklace over thataway, it was only 300 galleons, won't you buy it for me? As an early christmas present!”

He winced, three hundred galleons for some flimsy jewelry? He would rather just get a good look at it and transfigure a rock or something and be done with it. 

Now that was a thought.

“Tell you what, Trace, if you show me the bloody thing, I'll transfigure you a pair.”

She squealed, and started dragging him (and by extension Draco, who was still clutching Harry’s sleeve firmly) off to a hideously pink jewelry store that appeared to be in a perpetual state of valentines day madness. Draco mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like ‘I'd sooner shave my head then step foot into that monstrosity’, which made Harry snort loudly.

Tracey either didn't hear the boy or chose to ignore him, and instead shoved Harry’s face against the glass and pointed at a rather pretty teardrop necklace with matching earrings. For such an obnoxious store, it was stocked with relatively high quality and attractive pieces. Luckily for him, the whole set was rather simple as well, and he made quick work of a few pebbles Tracey handed him. While they wouldn't last as long as the permanent transfigurations Tom could pull off, he was confident that a decade or so would be long enough for Tracey to eventually get bored of or lose the jewelry.

“There you are.”

He dropped the delicate chain and matching silver hoops into her outstretched hands, getting a happy ‘you're the best!’ and a peck on the cheek in return. Harry rubbed the spot grumpily, wishing people would just ask before forcing affection on him. He didn't notice the angry glimmer in Draco’s eyes or the fire glancing across his fingers.

Harry really needed to get more observant with people’s emotions, or his obliviousness might come back to bite him one day.

* * *

All Draco could pay attention to was Tracey’s lips planting firmly on Harry’s cheek, as well as the roar of a forest fire as it tore through his self-control. Even Harry’s icy presence couldn't stop him from overflowing with an unfamiliar anger that made him want to reach out and flay Tracey alive.

Gripping Harry’s sleeve tightly, he took deep breaths in an attempt to calm down before something bad happened. As he did so, Harry dragged him back to the group, obviously oblivious to Draco’s quickly souring mood. 

_ For such a genus, he sure can be stupid. _

Draco tried to rationalize his frustration and bring his internal fire back down to a reasonable level of heat. It didn't work that well, as Tracey seemed insistent on obnoxiously admiring the necklace and earrings she now sported, dangling them in Greengrass’ face like they weren’t just measly pebbles.

_ Deep breaths, Malfoy. She’s just a scandal baby, her parents likely couldn't shower her with expensive jewelry like the rest of you. It is perfectly reasonable for her to admire relatively expensive jewelry. Harry is nice, he went for a cheap alternative. He didn't actually buy her expensive jewelry. Deep. Breaths. _

He tried to replicate the breathing exercises Harry had him practice in the forbidden forest during October. He calmed momentarily, rationalizing his anger and stamping it down as if a particularly unpleasant bug under his heel.

_ Tracey is obviously interested in Theo, and Harry never shows interest in anyone. She does not want him, he does not want her. Deep. Breaths. _

The raging forest fire was contained momentarily, and Draco breathed one more sigh of relief.

_ This can't keep happening to me. _

It was becoming next to impossible to focus on anything except for what Harry was doing or who Harry was talking to or figuring out what the stupid  _ beautiful _ idiot was going to do to get himself nearly killed this time. Perhaps he’ll make some trousers out of fish and wade into grindylow infested waters? Draco honestly wouldn't put it past the boy, if by some miracle Harry managed to live to adulthood, Draco would heavily consider the possibility of higher powers being at play. Perhaps there was a ‘what will Harry Potter do next?’ bingo going on up in the heavens, it would certainly explain a few things.

Honestly, if Draco wasn't already basically albino, he would be getting grey hairs.

Breaking him out of his stupor was a shout from Blaise, as he was pulled along by his ear. “Oi Daph, you're not forcing me into that pink prison!”

The Greengrass heiress seemed intent on doing so regardless, and Blaise was rather forcefully shoved into Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop. The poor bloke.

“Right then, are we splitting up? I've got to get more quills anyhow.”

Rather quickly Theo was off, with Tracey following closely behind. The girl's crush was rather obvious if your last name wasn’t Nott, so everytime the two interacted was painful for everyone else, mostly because of Tracey’s obvious pining and Theo’s obvious ignorance to the fact.

Draco sighed incrementally, this was shaping up to be a rather straining trip, who knows what might happen now that the only thing holding Harry back from doing something foolhardy was Draco’s considerably smaller body.

“Snuffles?”

He looked up to the boy, confused, and followed his line of sight to a frankly massive wolf, which appeared as though it had been caught at the scene of a crime. It was black, and mangey, quite obviously a mutt, and since it was prowling around the back of Honeydukes like some sort of omen of death, he could only assume that it was going to be a problem.

It also looked extremely guilty about something, or as guilty as a dog could look.

That was  _ not _ a good sign.

“You know that dog?”

Harry nodded, a peculiar look on his face. “Yea, I found ‘im in Surrey this summer.”

Draco’s eyebrows rose, “you mean that muggle area an hour from london? The one that's in Britain and not… Scotland?”

“Thus my confusion, Dray.”

The dog gave out a whine before taking off in the other direction, Harry quickly making chase.

“Bloody-”

Draco cursed his taste in men before following the pair as fast as he was able, but Harry had always been absurdly athletic for a guy who never seemed to exercise, and his obnoxiously long legs helped keep him a considerable distance from the Malfoy heir.

“I'm going to rip you a new one once I catch you, Potter!”

* * *

Harry darted over a fallen log blocking his path, now firmly into the forest and seemingly on the path to reach the shrieking shack. He kept a steady pace that managed to match Padfoot’s, jumping over rotting wood and the occasional poorly placed boulder. He had been meaning to talk to the man, but other than shadows of a wolf on the edge of the forbidden forest or the occasional howl in the dead of night, it seemed that Sirius had been keeping a much lower profile than he had in Harry’s last life. While that was good in some respect, it made things difficult when he actually wanted to find the bastard.

He realized that bolting off with Draco right there to bear witness was most likely not the best thing to do, as the shorter boy had been making a considerable effort to keep Harry from doing anything of considerable substance. Hell, he hadn't even been able to test his mystery potion on anyone yet because he had to beg permission just to walk the bloody halls on his own. Realistically, Harry understood the other boy’s anxiety, and felt quite a large amount of guilt over making him worry, but there were things that he needed to get  _ done;  _ and sitting around pretending to be the picture perfect snooty slytherin was not the way to go about doing said things.

Leaping over a precarious bolder, Harry whooped with glee, this was what he had been missing the past week:  _ adrenalin.  _

“Come on now Snuffles, no need to run!” Padfoot woofed in reply, speeding up as Harry laughed gleefully.

It seemed like Draco couldn't get his wish of having Harry stay out of trouble for much longer than a week at a time.

The forest ended abruptly and Harry found himself sprinting out into a familiar clearing, the shrieking shack merely a couple acres away. Padfoot skidded to a stop, and Harry nearly fell over him in a pitiful attempt to do the same. The grimm whined and darted to the left, running off to a different path that would eventually lead back to Hogsmeade. Harry almost followed chase, but stopped, instead just watching the old dilapidated shack on the distant hill carefully, the grimm sprinting back into the woods as if Harry was still following after.

Something felt strange about the shrieking shack, even from this distance Harry felt the need to go closer, and so he did, ignoring Padfoot as he ran back and tried to pull Harry the other direction. The animagus whined and growled, tugging at Harry’s trouser leg and generally being annoying, but it only made Harry more assured in his need to press on, even as Draco’s familiar yelling assaulted his ears.

“Bloody hell Potter, get away from that thing, it's gone mad!” 

Harry sighed, grabbing Padfoot by the scruff of his neck and summoning a collar and leash. 

“Here, hold onto this.” Passing the leash to Draco, a struggling Padfoot was collared and forced still as Harry continued forward.

“You’re not really going up there, are you?”

“I'll be right back.”

Harry broke out into a jog, ignoring the crazed barking from the grimm or the struggling curses from Draco as he fought to keep the dog still. All of that became background noise as he jumped the pathetic fence that lined the property and ran up to the half destroyed front door, slipping inside.

His nose was automatically assaulted with the smell of a decaying body, making him stumble back in shock. There lied a corpse, that was certain, though who it was he could only guess. It appeared to have been tortured rather heavily, lacerations flaying its reddened skin and cutting deep into now visible organs. Rats and flies and maggots crawled over the vast majority of the skin, eating at the face and eyes and fingers. He gulped down air, gagging at the smell, as he poked his head out into the fresh air.

This was _not_ what good human meat was supposed to smell like.

Throwing his arm over his nose, he crept forward, his curiosity over who it could be overriding his nausea. Dead and decomposing bodies didn't bother him, but by  _ merlin _ did that smell foul, in such a cramped space the rotting smell had been left to seep into every crevice and take over the place, having no way of escaping the house.

Bending down, he reached for the left arm, already having a clue of who this could be. Grasping the fabric, he pulled the sleeve upward, revealing reddened skin and aggressive lacerations.

And the dark mark.

Harry coughed, stumbling back as the putrid smell seemed to surge towards him. The corpse was Pettegrew then, that explained how Sirius knew it was there. He didn't feel much sympathy for the man, though Padfoot could have been smarter about the placement of incremental evidence towards his exploits. Regardless though, Harry didn't have enough respect for the rat to have any inclination to bury him, and could understand if that was the reason he was left to rot here by Sirius as well.

It was rather rude to leave such a nasty-smelling present for Lupin though.

A whine sounded from the door, and Harry looked to Padfoot, who whined again.

“Good on you, Sirius.”

There was only a brief moment where the stared at each other, before the animagus took off out the door. Harry sighed, for supposedly being a Gryffindor, Sirius could be quite the coward when facing emotional family issues. Though that did seem rather on brand for the Black heir, all things considered.

Harry closed his eyes and thought, his arm still covering his nose, he should probably just leave, there was nothing worth taking from the shack and Pettegrew deserved to rot. Before he was able to do a thing however, Draco shoved through the door, cussing at the rotting smell.

“What on circe’s green earth-”

The shorter boy stumbled, throwing his arm over his nose as he made direct eye contact with the corpse. Harry could see the very moment something snapped in him, and fell backwards on instinct as sparks danced across the other boys arms.

“Dray-”

Flames surged forward.

* * *

Draco was…  _ so  _ tired of always having to chase after Harry.

The blasted dog had nearly managed to yank his arm out of socket, and Draco, feeling vindictive, just let the mutt go, trudging after it angrily as it sprinted up to the blasted shrieking shack. His agitation was skyrocketing, the snow underfoot melting instantaneously as the heat pulsing off of him warmed the surrounding air several degrees. He jumped the fence, jogging slightly as the stupid mutt ran back past him, tail between its legs.

“Stupid thing…”

He mumbled more harsh words about Harry and his impulsiveness and how he really should have just let the bastard run of to get killed as he moved to the dilapidated front door of the shrieking shack.

The first thing he noticed was the smell.

“What on circe’s green earth-”

It smelt like nothing Draco had ever registered before, foul and unearthly in a way that was so unlike how life was supposed to be. Throwing his arm up, he came face to face with death. It was incomprehensible, the smell itself made his eyes water, but that reddened skin, the caked blood…

Gods, there were so many bugs.

No one ever said that about rotting corpses, how much filth surrounded what should have been a pure thing. A departed soul being bastardized and spit on by decomposition, left as nothing more than grotesque meat and organs. Flesh falling off the bone as rats scurried about and decimated the already morbid scene.

Something snapped inside him, and all the stress unfurled into wings of fire.

His vision was overtaken by red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone talks about possessive Harry, but did they ever consider jealous Draco? Hm, thought so. Also, this is going to be a two parter, because I've realized that (this being a pivotal point in Harry and Draco's relationship) I need to add as much detail to the ensuing chaos as possible.
> 
> Now, I promised an analysis of what the wendigo meant with the specific sounds it used last chapter, and I wont dissapoint:
> 
> His mother crying-The memory of his mother pleading for his life is still a traumatic one, and here it represents not only emotional anguish, but traumatic memories.
> 
> An old man’s sigh-Dumbledore, enough said, the man was the core reason for Harry's breakdown and the reason the wendigo insisted on keeping the memory as well as trashing the headmasters office. 
> 
> His own screams-Harry's internal pain, this shows how the memory of gryffindor tower would affect Harry once he remembered it, and shows the wendigo's reasoning for keeping the memory from him. The spirit and Harry may be (mostly) magically and mentally separate from each other, but the wendigo still reacts to more heightened emotions of Harry's and does things to negate the effects said emotions have on him.
> 
> In the end, the wendigo basically said, "this memory is emotionally agonizing, and holds things about Dumbledore that would reawaken a lot of internal pain for you, so nah I don't really want to give to back, sorry squirt."


	57. We Didn't Start the Fire pt.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fire can burn away at more than physical things, they can burn away inhibitions and self-security, tearing away at carefully placed walls till there is nothing left but raw skin, bone, and emotions. Fire can also be freeing, allowing previously hidden secrets to be thrown headfirst into the limelight.  
> This fire however, took far more than it gave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative summary:  
> Harry gets roasted by Draco, both literally and fIguratively.

**Previously:**

**No one ever said that about rotting corpses, how much filth surrounded what should have been a pure thing. A departed soul being bastardized and spit on by decomposition, left as nothing more than grotesque meat and organs. Flesh falling off the bone as rats scurried about and decimated the already morbid scene.**

**Something snapped inside him, and all the stress unfurled into wings of fire.**

**His vision was overtaken by red.**

Harry fell to the floor, his panic combining with a surge of adrenalin snapping a connection into place, a blizzard rising up from somewhere deep inside his heart. Throwing his arms out, ice shot out and encased his body in a protective dome of thick ice. He heard it crack loudly as the waves of fire rolled off of Draco. Harry grit his teeth, somewhat losing himself to the spirit as his wendigo surged up to double his efforts and stay safe.

“Draco! Damnit Dray, it's just a bloody corpse.”

He could see the fire was still blazing outwards from Draco’s body, who appeared through the splintering ice to have fallen to his knees. Harry grunted, pushing against the glacial dome in an effort to get somewhere other than the wooden floor, which was cracking and charring quickly regardless of his efforts. His mind started racing, what could he use besides his own ice to stop the fire?

_Think damnit. You’re better than this Potter._

If he didnt work fast, the fire would blaze out of control and (if the roof didn't cave in first) he and Draco would either suffocate on the smoke or-in Harry’s case-burn to a crisp. Rolling onto his stomach, Harry felt the beginnings of antlers press through his skin.

_God DAMNIT you piece of shite this is NOT the time._

“Okay Potter, you can make ice out of basically nothing, what else can you freeze and make useful?”

Pressing both hands into the rickety floor beneath him, Harry fortified the planks with ice, creating something of an igloo with no exit that was melting and freezing simultaneously, as the heat on the outside and the cold on the inside fought against each other. 

Fire burned up oxygen to create carbon dioxide, which was asphyxiant, meaning it could extinguish the fire if there was enough of it in a concentrated area. The problem with that was that the carbon dioxide was escaping the house instead of staying in place and extinguishing the blaze. So, if he set up a thick enough ice dome around the shack, it was reasonable to assume that he could just let the fire burn itself up with no harm done, the shrieking shack was rather pitiful anyway, so the only one losing anything would be Lupin. The only problem with that idea was that he would have to first remove himself from the shack and then deal with the likely possibility of Draco suffocating to death from lack of oxygen, or the shack collapsing in on him.

“That’s a no then-ah hell.”

He slammed his hand onto the side of his see-through igloo, shoving the ice magic outward and fortifying a section that was about to melt through. There was also the possibility of trying to get Draco out before he put up the dome, but there really wouldn't be any point of trying to put out the fire if there was no one inside that needed saving.

“Okay, so I have to put out the fire instantly, not just by letting it go out by lack of oxygen.”

There were a few possibilities, but most of them involved encasing the house in ice which had already been proven to be a shite idea. 

_Think Potter, THINK._

“This is fine-” a flaming beam crashed down onto his igloo, “-dammit! You literally studied chemistry and the periodic table for an entire _bloody_ year just to spite Tom, you _know_ this shite, just _think.”_

Carbon dioxide when frozen forms dry ice, which is extremely good at putting out fires, and would work much better with his skill set than the gas state would be. So, technically, if he managed to gather up enough of the gas, he could reasonably expect to make a good portion of dry ice and put out enough of the fire to make himself a path towards Draco and safety. In the event that oxygen continued to be relatively available he could consider the fire an infinite supply of dry ice, and just keep making more of it. The only thing to do, of course, is confirm that Draco was done being a human candlestick.

A glance towards the boy proved that the fireballs shooting out of his body had tapered down into flames flickering off his now exposed back, wings, and arms. If Harry could probably send him tumbling out of the door a mere foot away, but considering the rather large and rather hot support beam that was currently trying to burn a hole in his igloo, that was unlikely to be all that good of an idea.

Trying to calm down as his magic worked aggressively to keep him safe as the-equally aggressive-wendigo tried to wrangle control away from him, Harry started expanding the ice igloo so that there was more space for him to work with. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and slought out the carbon dioxide in the air outside of the bubble, working mostly on instinct as his magic urged the molecules closer and closer together by freezing the gaseous compound. It needed his full attention, as Harry honestly didn't know if it would even work, so the amount of time he had till his igloo of safety fully melted became shorter and shorter. Once he got the hang of it though, he quickly started seeing steaming ice form above the flames in the air, gathering more and more mass as the hot carbon dioxide rose to meet the quickly cooling molecules above. 

“Alright Dray, hold out a few more seconds for me.”

He was _so close_ to having enough ice to clear a path towards the boy, and was about to move it all into a workable path when his heart dropped to his stomach, a large cracking sound alerting him to the igloo splintering under the fallen beam. He had no time to react as another crack shattered the left side of his protections, the still-burning beam falling _fard_ onto his left shoulder. Wincing against the pain, Harry started to move, his magic understanding his intent and throwing what of the dry ice had been created in a path towards Draco. He was moving as it hit the floor, barreling through the quickly narrowing path towards the door. He heard another crack from above and felt a glacial wind slam into his back, throwing him forward just as a large beam fell into the spot he vacated. Reaching out, Harry grit his teeth as his hand closed around Draco’s burning arm, yanking the both of them out of the collapsing building and into the snow. Harry threw the other boy back first into snow, the fire on his back, shoulders, and wings fizzling out as the frozen water enveloped them.

Harry didn’t give himself enough time to celebrate the near brush with death, even if he wouldn’t die from the fire, it would still burn like a bloody bastard-as the pain in his hand and shoulder were any indication of. Grabbing the still quite hot shoulder of Draco’s prone form with his not burned left hand, Harry lifted the boy easily enough and threw him over his uninjured right shoulder, trekking quickly down the snowy slope and far enough away from the blaze to consider it safe.

Letting Draco fall to the snow in a heap, Harry collapsed as well, finally letting himself feel the pain from his injuries. His right hand was viciously burned from literally sticking it into fire in order to grasp ahold of Draco, and he doubted that episkey-which was only really meant to heal minor injuries like a broken nose-would do much for second and third degree burns like the ones on his hand and shoulder. Using ice to sooth the pain was also out, since the cold would only injure his cells further, so Harry settled to use the unyielding pain to fuel his intense annoyance with Sirius _Fucking_ Black. It would be a pain in the ass to brew the burn-healing paste one handed, and until that happened he would have to somehow get the considerably naked Draco some clothes and repair his own, as well as wrap the burns.

Making sure not to touch the snow with his right hand, Harry slowly climbed to his feet, noting with morbid relief that his shoulder was so burned that his nerves had been destroyed past the point of pain, and while the edges still stung his hand was the only thing that really felt all that injured. Even with the nerve damage syphoning off a lot of the pain, he was still not in particularly good shape, and he glared half heartedly down at Draco, trying to be mad but not having it in him. Sighing, long drawn out and tired, he trudged over to the treeline in search of sticks to transfigure into proper clothes for the boy, shrugging off his ruined leather jacket as he went. Glancing down at the thing, he noticed with distaste that Draco’s fire had somehow melted the cheap metal of the decorative spikes into his shoulder, and Harry felt extremely unenthusiastic about attempting to pull the slowly solidifying metal and leather from his partially destroyed flesh.

Whatever, magic could heal most wounds, and it was really of no consequence if it ended up scaring anyway, he had more important things to worry about than another potential disfigurement. 

* * *

Theo could feel to his bones that Draco and Harry were getting up to something potentially lethal, but couldn't bring himself to try and hunt them down and put a stop to it. 

Instead, he continued to ponder his classes as he strode through shelves of stationary, occasionally picking up elaborate quills and enchanted journals. Nothing held up to his standards however, and Theo was feeling more and more sure that he wouldn't be buying anything after all.

His classes it would seem, were relatively fine, all things considered, except for the small detail of Trelawney being a complete and utter psycho. The woman had taken one look at him from behind her massive glasses and instantly dubbed him a ‘soul tortured by fate’ whatever the hell that meant, and from that day forward seemed insistent on trying to get him to admit to all of his rather upsetting visions. 

As it was, Theo really did NOT enjoy her class.

It wasn't even that Trelawney was a bad teacher-even though she was-it was just that she was so sadistically insistent on having him relive horrible experiences in a way of proving to the rest of the class that divination wasn’t complete and utter hogwash. Considering that the woman herself never remembered her visions-something that Theo found highly suspect in its own right-but she seemed to latch onto any other seers as if communing with a celebrity, which was not only obnoxiously unprofessional but just downright rude, he honestly believed the rumors of her being a hack.

If Theo didn’t need a NEWT in divination, he would have stormed out by now, but it seemed he would have to grin and bear her nonsense for another four years.

Theo sighed, picking up another ornate quill made of an unnecessarily large and gold encrusted eagle feather. Honestly, the only people who actually wrote with quills like that were pompous prats, a Malfoy man, or both.

“Found something interesting?”

He turned to Tracey, who was looking over his shoulder at the quill with curiosity.

“Nah, just an early birthday present for Draco.”

She snickered as he carefully placed it back on the shelf, eyes following the movement as she studied his face.

“Have you been sleeping well, Theo?”

He couldn’t remember the last time he went to bed earlier than three am, “yea, why?”

“You've got some rather nasty undereye bags.”

She then pointed the out with her finger, as if he didn’t already know.

“Probably just my naturally unappealing appearance.”

She screwed up her nose, looking him up and down as if proving a point, he raised an eyebrow in response.

“Very funny, pretty boy, now are you _sure_ you’ve been getting enough sleep?”

“Positive.”

She looked like she didn't believe a word he said, but instead of pressing him simply rolled her eyes and strolled off to another part of the store, humming a song off-tune as she went. Theo turned back to the quills with a slightly more sour mood, his fingers brushing across the feathers. The feeling that Draco and Harry had done something potentially lethal came back full force, and he wondered if it was such a good idea to leave the mentally unstable and emotionally constipated soulmates alone together.

“Oh merlin…”

Turning sharply, he made his way to the door, hoping that he could find them before something burned down.

* * *

Harry watched the shrieking shack fall into a heap of burning wood with a feeling of tired acceptance, observing the gnarled old kindling as he wrapped summoned bandages around his right hand. His shoulder would be hard to cover on his own, but once Draco woke up the boy could help him with it. Grunting, he used a well placed cutting curse on the bandage, stuffing the end into the wrap so it would all stay firm.

A pitiful-sounding whine came from a few yards away to his left, and Harry glanced towards Padfoot, who had been chained up on a tree for what Harry had dubbed ‘timeout for the idiot’. Honestly, it was the man’s own fault for coming back to the scene of his crime with witnesses in tow, and it was breaching on _insanity_ to come back to see if all was a-okay when Harry was so obviously burned and extremely pissed off. He glared at the mutt, who covered his eyes with his paws and continued to whine.

If Sirius was hellbent on committing murder, the least he could do was be smart about it.

Harry looked down at his mended leather jacket with a sigh. He had managed to fix the melted hole in the leather, so all he really needed to do was find some metal to permanently transfigure into some spikes so it would be complete again.

There was a groan to his right, and Harry threw some trousers and pants in Draco’s direction, trying to forget the sight of the boy’s rather exposed rear end. There was some shuffling as the sleepy Draco pulled them on, grumbling about ‘everything hurts’ and ‘it's so bloody cold’ and ‘my balls have been sucked back up into my bloody pelvis’. Harry snorted at that one.

“What the ‘ell happened... Harry?” 

The boy’s words were slurred, and the taller teen silently passed a warm jumper and coat over instead of answering, grabbing for the summoned bandages he had dropped to the snow. Sirius whined again, eyes still covered by his paws.

It was quiet except for the rustling of fabric as Draco got dressed in the warm clothes, still grumbling on about the cold and his wings and other such inconsequential things. He became considerably more lucid however, when he looked up to see Harry peering down at him with a horrific and obviously lethal burn on his shoulder.

That sight sent the poor Malfoy heir into panic mode.

Sure, Harry couldn't really die from injuries, and as the burn didn’t hurt anymore from the nerve damage, he was feeling relatively alright, but third degree burns were extremely vulnerable to sepsis, which could very easily kill someone. Luckily for Harry, he was immune to disease, infection, and pretty much everything else, so sepsis wasn’t a concern for him. Unluckily for Harry, Draco didn't know that.

“Harry-fuck, what happened?!”

Draco seemed like he wanted to reach out to the (frankly, horrific looking) burn and help some way, but they both knew he had no idea how to do any healing spells and Harry had never bothered since his first life, so Draco just stood there looking more and more stressed.

“Well… You saw a corpse, went ballistic, and burned down the shrieking shack while we were still inside.”

Draco went a worrying shade of ashen gray, whipping around just as the last of the shack’s frame fell to the dirt with the rest of the rubble.

“Oh merlin…”

“I got us both out before the entire thing went down, but a beam fell on my shoulder at some point and the arm I grabbed to pull you out was on fire, so you got me pretty good in that respect as well.”

Harry was quickly realizing that he should stop talking and start comforting, as Draco wobbled slightly, staring down at Harry’s bandaged hand with horror.

“I-I did that…?”

Harry winced, he was awful with emotions. “No-shite. Listen, I can't even feel my shoulder and I chose to grab you of my own volition. It isn't your fault that your magic lashed out after you saw something upsetting. Alright? Dray? You can't blame yourself for this.”

“Of course I can!”

“Dray-”

“I'm not free from all guilt, Potter. If something is my fault, fucking let it be MY FAULT!”

Harry reared back as if slapped, watching with wide eyes as Draco paced around in the snow like a wounded animal, obviously scared but more vindictive than Harry had ever seen him.

“You seem to have a good enough grip on your creature, which must just be bloody fantastic-” Harry winced, thinking of the budding antlers hidden by his hair. “-but this veela is messing with me FOOKIN mind okay?! I don’t know what the fookin hell ’m supposed to do when every little hint of anger makes me go fookin’ BALLISTIC!”

Harry had never seen Draco angry, and couldn't quite comprehend the sudden change from his usual Queen's English to something... well he wouldn't say it was Cockney but it was worryingly close-and was frankly too shocked to really register anything besides the fact that the boy was, in fact, _very_ angry.”

“Draco I know you're mad-”

“Oh ‘m mad am I?”

_Yes, and worryingly cockney._

“Listen-”

“You’ve got a bloody bone showing through tha fookin burns in yer shoulder and ‘m jus’ supposed to fookin’ listen-”

 _“Merlin_ Draco-”

“What the absolute hell is going on over here!?”

They both whipped around, catching sight of an erate Theo storming up the path towards them. Harry felt dread pool low in his chest. Great, now _two_ short, angry boys will yell at him in tandem as his skin rots. Lovely.

“Theo-”

“What the hell happened to the shrieking shack?” He looked to Harry and raised his eyebrows in alarm. “-and what the hell happened to _you?”_

Harry sucked in air through his teeth, explaining quickly and all in one breath, still slightly scared of pissing either of them off further. “Well, Draco burned the shack down while we were still inside and now his accent is changing… please help.”

Theo looked completely baffled, glancing over at Draco with something akin to surprise. “I thought your mother made you take lessons to correct that-”

“Oh shove off, Nott.”

“Lessons?”

Theo took a breath. “Well when we were kids he had this nanny-”

“I said shove off!”

Harry took a step back, looking between the two considerably shorter boys with trepidation. He could barely handle the new monster that was angry Draco, and he honestly doubted that he would survive getting in the middle of him and Theo. If they wanted to scream it out, Harry was happy to run the other direction at this point, his burns were really starting to bother him.

Theo however, seemed even less inclined to want an argument, and just turned from Draco, focusing his attention onto Harry once more.

“You know what? I don't want to know what sort of shite you lot have gotten up to, but I’ll be the responsible one and clean up the mess. Now, we are getting you-” he pointed his finger at Harry, “-to Professor Snape so he can heal those burns, and you-” he turned and pointed to Draco, “-into a warm bath so you can calm the ‘ell down.”

Harry grumbled a bit, the less Snape knew the happier he was, but as this really only related to Draco’s creature-which Snape already knew of-he was less concerned about revealing the situation to the man. Regardless, Snape probably had some burn-healing paste lying around somewhere anyway, and Harry would really prefer not to have to brew it himself. Draco, who was thankfully calming down as well, nodded stiffly.

“Would one of you at least help me wrap this?”

The other two boys seemed to realize in tandem that his burned shoulder probably shouldn't be exposed to the leather of his fixed jacket, or the air. Theo snatched the bandages from Harry’s outstretched arm, and had him sit down on the snow as he firmly wrapped the shoulder.

Harry stood once he was finished, pulling the jacket on slowly as to not stress his muscles, Theo nodded absentmindedly.

“I’m sure the others will understand if we leave early. Gather up your things you two, we’re leaving, _now.”_

Theo waited for Harry to untie Padfoot as Draco stood there blankly, foot tapping as he gave the animagus one more pointed look before he darted back off into the wilderness.

"Done?"

"I'm coming, I'm coming..."

Theo started forward, and the other two followed soberly behind. Draco sank into a quiet, reflective mood as Harry fidgeted.

He looked to the shorter boy, feeling that he haven't said enough, hadn't explained as he should have. Tentatively, he reached out with his left hand. “Dray…”

“What.”

He winced at the tone, but pressed on. “Even if you are at fault for this, I just can’t put the blame on you, because… because I do understand Dray, it's eating me alive.”

Gray met green, fire met ice. Draco sighed, and met Harry halfway, grasping his outstretched hand firmly.

**You can put the blame on your own shoulders, but others will always be there to help carry the burden.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing......... Genus!Harry at his best! I wanted to show off some of Harry's more muggle science inclined knowledge and how it can benefit him in the magical world. I honestly had a lot of fun researching if this was actually possible with the magical powers the two of them have and since the science checks out it I can reasonably confirm that Draco and Harry now have a combo move: Dry Ice Machine.
> 
> Also, as I doubt it was explicitly said in the fic, I'll just say it here. I like to think that Draco had a nanny as a child with a thick cockney accent, so he had to be kept so secluded from people growing up because his accent was utterly atrocious. I've allowed that headcanon to bleed over into this fic since its just too funny and also helps soften the emotional pain slightly, but I don't think I really made that explicitly clear.


	58. Inconsequential

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you realized that you were a stepping stone for greater forces, would you submit to your fate, or fight against it tooth and nail?  
> It seems that parts of Tom Riddle would disagree on the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Gore, descriptions of 4th degree burns, idk there's a fight scene in there too (does that really need a warning tho?)

Professor Snape had looked unbelievably tired when the trio of third years trapezed through his door, appearing as if they were just out of a war zone. Snape had seemed about ready to drink himself into a coma when they had explained what had happened, and had actually pulled out a bottle of firewhiskey when Harry revealed the extent of his injuries.

“With all due respect, Mr. Potter, how the bloody hell are you still lucid?”

Harry shrugged his good shoulder in response, his left hand still grasping Draco’s firmly. “To be completely honest sir, the nerve damage is doing wonders for my overall pain.”

After a shot glass of Ogden’s finest, Snape sat him down on a stool and carefully examined the wounded shoulder, cursing under his breath occasionally as he went.

“Well… not only do you have rather large patches of copper and leather melted into your charred flesh, but most of the skin, fat, and muscle surrounding your collarbone, including your supraspinatus muscle, have been either completely destroyed or heavily injured. I would say with the exceptional heat of a Veela’s fire, as well as the metal spikes on your ridiculous jacket, you’re facing grotesque fourth-bordering on fifth-degree burns. If it weren't for your magic somehow keeping your skin from decaying right off your body and the considerable amount of nerve that you possess, I would suggest you go the easy route and just get the entire chunk of injured tissue amputated, and by extension your arm. Sadly, since you always insist on being difficult, I suppose you’ll need a fair amount of muscle, skin, and nerve regeneration potions along with extremely potent burn paste instead. And, honestly Potter, it would shock and astound me if you managed to walk away from this without a painfully obvious and obnoxiously large scar covering most of your shoulder and collar, regardless of what I may be able to do to heal you.”

Harry winced, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant prognosis, but not unsurprising considering the circumstances.

“I suppose that's fair.” 

Draco croaked, “you bloody wot?”

The boy had gone ashy, and Theo looked as though he was going to be sick. Harry honestly didn't blame either reaction, but didn't really know what to say in regards to them. He shrugged again, watching with interest as his exposed collar bone moved with the motion.

“You ok mate? Having a scar that big would be rather… well, big.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, “if you haven't noticed Theo, I am well versed in living life with large visible scars maring my flesh. At least I can cover up my shoulder if it gets too much attention, my face is fat out of luck.”

Snape seemed to agree with his thought process, and while his two friends contemplated his words, the professor started to jolt down what ingredients would be necessary to bring up from his storage. Harry didn't expect the other boys to fully understand what it had been like for him to have a huge scar trailing down his face for his entire life, so he didn't feel all that insulted that they had never thought about it. Snape seemed to understand though, which was a strange thing to say, but having the mark of a madman on his arm would give credence to that sympathy at the very least. Thinking about it, Harry supposed that he himself had been branded in a similar way as the Death Eaters had, except as an opposition instead of a follower of Voldemort.

“Right then professor, do you have all the needed potions or should I wait here while you brew them?”

Snape raised a single eyebrow. “Muscle regenerative is costly in both my time and money, Potter.”

“So shall I pay upfront or just send the bill to gringotts?”

Snape muttered something about rich kids before kicking the other two slytherins out, saying that it was unnecessary for them to stand around and dot on Harry as he was getting treated. Once the door had been firmly slammed on the boys’ faces, the professor slunk off to a side room, no doubt to plunder through his healing potions for the necessary balms and brews. As he did so, Harry looked down and started to unwrap his hand, wanting to observe the burns on his palm for any changes in their condition. Examining the tender skin, he found that besides some redness and a considerable amount of swelling, it was doing just fine.

“Don’t tell me your hand is injured as well.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Snape, “it's just a second degree burn in the very least, my shoulder is much more of an issue.”

The door to the side room slammed shut as Snape raised an eyebrow, carrying with him a large array of phials filled with varying hues of potion and one jar containing a thick, orange paste. The professor glanced at Harry’s palm with something akin to annoyance, before uncorking the jar and handing it to the boy with a sneer. Harry just thanked him and set it on his knee, using his left hand to slather his right palm and fingers in the thick paste. As he did so, Snape prepared the various potions for consumption, occasionally voicing his distaste of having idiotic morons in his house. Harry executed a considerable amount of restraint in ignoring him.

Wiping his fingers of the paste, he put the lid back on the jar and set it on the nearby desk, taking one of the potions as it was handed to him. Gulping it down, Harry grimaced, it was a horrid yellow color and tasted like bottled sweat, so it was likely the muscle regenerative. Snape took the phial and replaced it with another one. Harry looked at it with a constipated expression, it was the nerve regenerative, lovely. The potion would work instantaneously, sewing his nerves back together and quickly mending the burned tissue. The only problem was as his nerves started to heal, they would quickly realize that something was Very Wrong and start sending all sorts of signals to his brain, all conveying that he was supposed to be in an obnoxious amount of pain.

Basically, it was liquid agony when you had an injury as large and lethal as his.

“Oh just drink it, Potter.”

“With all due respect professor, piss off.”

He took a deep breath, before chugging down the foul, gritty liquid in one gulp. Clenching his teeth together, he squeezed his eyes shut as he started to feel the full extent of his injuries for the first time. 

_You have survived the cruciatus curse, you can survive one measly burn._

Harry grunted, and cracked an eye open in an effort to adapt to the pain. Taking a deep breath, he winced slightly as his visible collarbone became much less cool and much more horrifically painful. Momentarily victorious in his fight against his pain tolerance, Harry handed the empty potion bottle to an incredibly impressed Severus Snape, who wordlessly replaced it with the skin regenerative. That one went down much easier, and Harry got to enjoy the feeling of his muscles, nerves, and skin renotting back together.

It, truthfully, was incredibly unenjoyable.

“I suggest, Mr. Potter, that you attempt to keep Mr. Malfoy calmer in the future.”

Harry glanced at the professor, watching the man as he slathered the thick burn paste onto his slowly healing shoulder.

“Duly noted.”

* * *

After being shoved out of Snape’s office, Draco bombarded him with questions about his injuries, asking if he was ok, or if he was going to die, or if his shoulder was healed now-the typical worried Draco nonsense. Harry had insisted that he was just fine, and that Snape had said he would be all healed up within the week. His words seemed to placiate the blond in some manner, though Harry continued to be watched carefully during his week of recovery.

And what a week it was.

All of the school had heard about how the shrieking shack had mysteriously burned down, and how there had been an ‘unidentifiable’ human corpse inside. Upon inspection by the ministry, it was found that the corpse sported a dark mark on its left arm, and the auror force descended into chaos. Many people (including the minister) wanted to brush the charred body off as Sirius Black, and they almost did till a particularly sharp auror pointed out that an autopsy might prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was indeed the azkaban escapee. As it was, the auror departments forensics division (which was pitiful and woefully underfunded) had worked tirelessly the entire week and had yet to come back with anything conclusive. 

Hogwarts was ripe with rumors about what had happened, gossip ranging from the shack actually being a dragon nest, to Black having been killed by any number of people as penance for his crimes, included but not limited to: Hadrian James Potter, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and (oddly enough) Ronald Weasely. It was theorized that that last name had been snuck in the rumor mill by the boy himself. In the end though, only slytherin house was aware that Harry and Draco were somehow responsible for the fire, and they only knew from the rather obvious burn paste the taller of the two slathered on his shoulder and hand every morning and night. It also helped that head of house Severus Snape had held a house meeting, explaining that the two were involved in some way and that he would string them up by their toes if they said a word to anyone. Suffice it to say, the Slytherin house was both intrigued and warry of the two, much to Draco’s displeasure and Harry’s indifference. 

Only the small friend group of third years knew exactly what had happened that day, as Theo had forced Harry to explain why exactly he was injured to his worried friends. Strangely, Blaise and Tracey had been relatively uninterested in hearing about their brush with death, finding the muggle science Harry had implemented to be a bore. Blaise had silently noted that Harry’s creature had some sort of correlation with ice, but then ignored everything else that was said. Daphne however, was absolutely _enthralled_ by the prospect of ‘dry ice’, and wanted to know all about it’s properties and how it was made. Harry happily sent Hades off to get one of his chemistry books, and promised Daphne she could read as many of his muggle science books as she pleased.

“Do you know where the seven deadly sins originated from?”

Harry glanced at Luna, mirroring Theo’s equally confused expression.

They were out in the snow, enjoying the cold weather by huddling around the human heater that was Draco Malfoy. Harry didn't feel all that inclined to try and get warm, but he was the closest to Draco regardless. None of the three boys had originally expected to run into Luna out there, but Theo had somehow noticed the tiny girl jumping to get her shoes that were stuck up in an old tree, and once Harry got them down for her the group all gathered around said tree to enjoy each other's company.

The Nott heir shifted in place, rubbing his neck uncomfortably as Luna’s innocent doe eyes stared back at him expectantly. “They appear in christian faith occasionally, yeah?”

Luna nodded, then shook her head. “Yes and no. Of course they are in christianity, used as harbingers of destruction or other such tosh, but they don’t originate in religion.”

Harry and Theo shared heavy looks, apprehension rising steadily as Luna reared up for an excited rant. The little second year was a gem, and they both loved her dearly as friends, but she was rather bonkers and tended to know things about topics that she would be much better off not knowing.

“Oh who gives a shite, Lovegood.”

Draco lounged across the snow, his head resting on a neatly folded cloak right next to Harry’s thigh. The boy’s mood had been sour towards anyone other than Harry lately, seemingly trying to keep anyone who could potentially be a threat away from the tall teen, much to Harry’s chagrin.

Theo shot the dramatic boy a nasty look, before turning back around and smiling encouragingly to Luna. “I’d like to know all about it Luna, please say more.”

She beamed, rubbing mittened hands together in excitement. “Well, seven is a magically powerful number-as I'm sure you know-and for thousands of years it has had _very_ evil connotations. Have you ever heard the muggle curse ‘you are the seventh son of a seventh son’? It is actually meant to plague a person with misfortune because it’s double seven-and! If someone does end up being the seventh son of a seventh son, they are supposed to have special powers like healing or some such, really fantastical things like that! Well anyways, I was looking through my mother’s old trunk over the summer, and found a book about magical numbers and such-but that's not important. Half of the tome was dedicated to something called the Seven Devils Theorem!”

She paused, watching the three of them with wide eyes, Harry made a ‘go on’ motion with his hand. Her excited smile got wider, and Harry felt a certain amount of warmth at her momentary lucidity. 

“The Seven Devils Theorem states that as the sins are bred from people, so if you gather seven people who inhibit the sins’ traits, you will be able to create a group that not only symbolizes the seven demons, but also embodies them!”

Harry binked, “embodies them…?”

Luna’s eyes bore into his skull, “you know, the people become devil incarnate in a sense.”

Theo seemed deeply concerned about what the girl was saying, and had a look in his eye that suggested he was drawing a few revolutionary conclusions. Harry could only guess what he was thinking of, perhaps it was Daphne’s prideful nature, the burning retribution in her eyes as she looked down her nose at you. Or maybe he was thinking of Draco’s fire, of his anger and burning wings and wrathful outbursts. Or it could be Luna’s wispy stature, her slumping shoulders and sleepy eyes. Or maybe…

Well, Harry didn’t let himself entertain the thought any further.

“That’s nice, real morbid and all that, but what’s your bloody point?” Draco grumbled into his folded cloak, watching tiredly as his hands melted the snow resting in his palm. Luna ignored his tone, continuing her explanation.

“Well it just sounds awfully fun don't you think? If I had six friends that were willing to take part in a black magic demonic ritual with me, I would certainly entertain the prospect.”

Harry choked on his own saliva as Theo lunged forward and slammed his gloved hand over her mouth, Draco started laughing.

 _“You can't just say things like that.”_ The Nott heir hissed between his teeth, his hand still obstructing Luna’s ability to speak. “Do you have any idea what would have happened to you if one of the professors had overheard you saying something like that? Even _talking_ about black magic is practically writing ‘I support Lord _fucking_ Voldemort’ on your forehead!”

Harry was impressed with Theo’s ability to say Tom’s old moniker, but Draco seemed to find much less appropriate, his eyes steely and narrowed onto the boy.

“Don't say that name, Nott.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “What-Voldemort? You don't want people to say Voldemort? That name, Voldemort, is something you don't want someone to say? Voldemort, that's what-”

Now Draco was the one to slap a mittened hand over someone’s mouth, cutting Harry off in the middle of his sarcastic tirade. They shared a look, and Draco glairing heatedly at the teen as Harry dared him to respond to the taunting. Theo sighed, removing his own hand from Luna’s mouth.

“The name isn't something to fear Draco, just the man.”

Draco whipped around, eyes hard and tongue sharp. “The Dark Lord is a _monster,_ not a man, and I can fear whatever or whomever I like.”

_Monster._

Weren't they all monsters in some form or another? Sure, Voldemort was filth that deserved to be smeared underfoot, but Tom Riddle was a rather… well, again-they were all monsters in some form or another. Hell, Harry was more monster than human, and Draco quite literally had wings growing from his back. To say that Voldemort was a monster was an insult to monsters everywhere.

Luna smiled at Draco kindly, grasping Theo’s gloved hand as she did so.

“All monsters have at least half a soul. So I don't believe Voldemort qualifies for the title.”

As the other two boys grappled with trying to understand her words, Harry’s eyes narrowed in thought. He had certainly noticed a shift in Tom after he had supposedly absorbed the diary, though he had brushed the personality shift off till nearly a decade later when Tom felt it prudent to bloody tell him about the absorption. The idea had credence however, was the loss of so much of his soul the reason for Voldemort’s insanity? It explained why Tom was trying so desperately to absorb the other shards, as he now understands the ramifications of horcruxes on his mind and wishes to correct it in some manner.

He met Luna’s eyes and nodded, silently showing that he understood what she meant, she smiled sadly in response.

* * *

“You’re being difficult, brat.”

“Sod off, you old coot.”

Tom groaned, glaring across the table at Gaunt Ring Tom, who met his eyes with similar hatred. Despite the horcrux having been created just as the real Tom Riddle had become Head boy, he had an air of utter arrogance that was difficult to match. Not only that, but the cup horcrux was very much in agreement with him on the subject of who was more deserving of being the main soul, and Tom was finding that he hated the pair more and more by the day. Luckily the diadem was, at its core, a scholar, as it was created when Tom had been traveling the world and still had hope of becoming the defense against the dark arts professor instead of a murderous dark lord, and was leaning more in Tom’s favor. The locket, to his annoyance, was practically the same as the Ring, and despised him with a fiery passion.

As it was, Tom was having some difficulty with his soul shards.

“First of all, I'm only seventy, and you're a little shit who should have no argument in this.”

The Ring screwed up his face nastily, “Why? Since my journal decided to bow down to a lesser force I now have to as well?”

Tom’s eye twitched, “No, because you are a hormonal teenager with an ego the size of Russia. Now are you going to meld with me or shall I be off…?”

Regardless of his horcruxes being difficult, Tom also needed to deal with the dictatorial reign of the wendigo that he now had to live with. He hadn’t spoken with Harry in almost a month, and he had no bloody clue what was going on with the boy. Every time he did so little as peek his head out of the door separating them, he could hear the fast approaching screeches of the spirit, and didn’t want to know what would happen if he waited a few seconds longer for it to arrive. Tom honestly doubted that the snot-nosed brat across from him would hold up in a fight against one of the greatest predators known to wizardkind, and was tempted to see what the wendigo would do to him.

“You are weak, hiding away in the cranium of a child you should have killed in infantacy.”

Or perhaps he would just strangle the little shit and be done with it.

Tom rolled his eyes, leaning back in the plush armchair he inhibited. “What does that say about you? You are aware that this ring of yours is a deathly hallow, yes?”

The horcrux narrowed his eyes, but nodded anyway.

_Oh lovely, we’re finally getting somewhere._

“So you understand that you belong to the master of death?”

A slower, more cautious nod.

“And who might that be?”

An angry glare. “That child is undeserving-”

“Oh just admit you’re a means to an end, horcrux of mine. You are a stepping stone for greater powers and you should be _proud_ of that.”

The ring sprang to his feet, prowling around the coffee table between them like a lion about to lunge at a gazelle. “I crawled out from the _mud_ to become something great, something timeless. You look at me, look at who I have become, look at the king of Slytherin, at Lord Voldemort himself, and say that he is _inconsequential?”_ The teen hissed threatenly, eyes glimmering with hate and destruction. An inferno in the making, a demon crawling up from the pits of hell to wreak havoc on the world. The young man continued. “You are Tom Riddle, a filthy little halfblood _bastard_ with nothing but half of your soul and a corner of someone else’s mind to occupy.” The words were spat like venom, as if unclean and foul in the mouth of something much fouler. “Just watch and wait, you little _coward,_ and you'll get the honor of seeing me rise again.” Pale hands pressed firmly into the arms of his chair, insanity addled eyes boring into his own, _“~and you won't be able to stop me when I pry the deathly hallows out of your dear Harry Potter’s cold dead hands.~”_

The threat sat in the air and stayed there, angry eyes boring into identical calm ones. Tom raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“If you wish to threaten me, please do so with a scenario that is actually plausible. Really, do you expect me to believe _you_ are capable of killing him? That you could _ever_ hope to kill the human embodiment of an immortal cockroach?”

Tom smiled, twisted and cruel and showing the full extent of decades upon decades of horrible actions and unspeakable horrors. Leaning forward, his eyes gleamed a glowing red of his years upon years of black, satanic magic. He hissed low, whispering words of truth as the world imploded behind his eyes.

_“~He destroyed me, destroyed Lord Voldemort as a child of one, what could you possibly do against him?~”_

An arm pulled back from where it had gripped one of the chair’s arms, swinging forward and socking him straight in the jaw. Tom laughed, he had always returned to his muggle roots when particularly angry. The arm pulled back again, and swung, knocking his head back with the force of the punch. Tom started to laugh harder.

“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”

He let the boy have his temper tantrum, sitting back and laughing as the horcrux threw more and more punches. There was no point in fighting back anyway, he would heal soon enough, and a black eye was nothing if it meant he got to watch his younger self lose control.

“Are you angry that I’m right? Are you bothered by the fact that we exist on borrowed time?”

_“~SHUT UP!~”_

He laughed, laughed long and loud and _monstrously_ as the twisted little shard of soul screamed with fury. A fist cracked against his jaw, dislocating it and making the laughter more garbled as he choked in pain. He hacked a cough, and lunged forward with a shout, swinging his arm with greater velocity and sending the teen tumbling to the floor, he felt his knuckles crack on the impact. Throwing his head back, he breathed a deep breath, giggling with glee. Tom gripped his jaw, snapping it back into place in one fluid motion before standing, looking down at the groaning boy with disgust. Prowling forward, he pulled his foot back and kicked the horcrux as hard as he could in the stomach, watching as he instinctively curled up in response to the bowl. The young man coughed wetly, scrambling to his feet as he lunged at Tom with raised, bloodied fists. 

This was his nature, fighting and screaming and _clawing_ for victory. Blood and fury and _hatred,_ nothing calm and cordal to it. Tom dodged, bringing his elbow down onto the teen’s collarbone _hard,_ feeling it snap with a satisfying _crunch._ A leg kicked out and swiped his knee, and he fell to the floor with the boy. What started as a stiff conversation quickly turned into an all out, savage brawl.

Inconsequential indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed writing Tom, an even more so missed writing crazy, batshit insane Tom who watches the world burn while beating up a separate part of his soul for no good reason other than teen!Tom is a little bitch and deserves to get his stupid pretty face beaten black and blue.


	59. Your Life is Worth More than Morals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaise lays his choices at Daphne's feet, she makes a decision for him.

This first of December brought an icy chill that swept through the airy castle as if on a warpath, and as the seconds crept father from November the quiet night was filled with quiet voices as children warmed their beds with quilts and charms, chattering over hot cocoa in homely common rooms. Professors settled into their offices, lighting the hearths with the wave of a wand as they graded papers or wrote out the next month’s lesson plans. Deep in the dungeons of Hogwarts sat Severus Snape, busying himself with potions as sleep continued to evade him, dreams of red eyes and green lights haunting him in the dead of night. Up in a tower sat an old man, plotting away as the heat of a phoenix who sat perched on his shoulder warmed his ancient skin. A tabby cat with the markings of spectacles around her eyes curled up tightly in a low back chair, sleepily kneading a decorative blanket and purring gently as a fire crackled. The only one still wandering the halls was the caretaker, Argus Filch, who shambled along the freezing corridors with a steady footfall, grumbling about the cold as Mrs. Norris darted along ahead.

Of course, Harry Potter haunted the halls as well, but only the winter storm outside would bear witness to his exploits.

The wind howled ferociously as the door to the hospital wing squeaked open, an invisible figure slinking inside silently. The door was then shut with a quiet click. Inside the infirmary was nothing but rows and rows of beds, only one of which was occupied. The snow outside beat against the windows as quiet steps clicked against the pale stone underfoot. There was the sound of shuffling, before a tan hand with unnaturally long fingers appeared from nowhere, as if brushing aside an invisible curtain, as if space itself was parting like silky fabric. Held aloft in the hand was a phial of shining, golden liquid, which swirled and glimmered in the light of the moon.

Another hand revealed itself from the invisible fabric and uncorked the phial, before reaching to the back of Hermione Granger’s neck to hold her head aloft. The hand holding the phial closed in on the girl, the sleeve of a night shirt peeking out from behind the curtain of empty space as more of a person was revealed. The girl's lips were parted, and the golden liquid was poured down her throat, the hand holding her neck massaging the potion down.

Both hands retreated, the muggleborn’s head resting back down onto the pillow as if nothing had happened, with the hands disappearing from sight. There was the sound of shuffling which was almost drowned out by the wind, before the hand appeared again at the foot of the bed, this time holding a wand aloft. The wand was waved in a complicated pattern, a gray light shooting out and hitting the girl right in the chest. The hand raised higher, and shot off the same spell to the windows above the girl’s bed. Disappearing once again, the hand and wand vanished into the empty space as soft footfalls moved from the bed to the door, which soon creaked open just enough for someone to fit through, before closing with a quiet click.

Hermione Granger’s chest glowed with a shimmering golden light, before dimming back into normalcy. The infirmary quiete for just a moment as the world seemed to hold its breath… till the wind gave another strong shove against the windows, finally succeeding in its effort to get inside as a particularly weak lock broke off as the window slammed open, snow and ice streaming into the room like freezing water splashing across hot coals. 

An alarm sounded in the quarters of Madam Poppy Pomfrey, and the woman woke with a start, scrambling out of her bed and into the infirmary just in time to see another three windows get forced open by the unnaturally strong winds. Gasping slightly, the mediwitch waved her wand towards the glass, frowning in confusion as the large paned windows groaned with effort against the wind, but didn’t budge.

Cursing under her breath, the woman wrapped her nightgown tighter around her body, speeding over to the prone girl who was receiving the brunt of the cold and snow. Waving her wand once more, she groaned in frustration as the girl’s body resisted her magic. Grunting, she yanked at the bed, finally succeeding in doing something useful as she pulled the bed along, wheeling it away from the snow and setting the metal headboard against an opposite wall. Leaving for just a moment, Pomfrey returned with several blankets and quilts, layering them onto the girl in an effort to adapt to the new issue as it presented itself.

Waving her wand a final time, the mediwitch sighed with relief as a protective sheen enveloped the girl, protecting her from the snow but not the chill.

“Good enough for the night, I suppose. My apologies in advance, Miss. Granger.”

Considering her job done, Madam Pomfrey spared an annoyed glance to the windows that were still held firmly against the walls by the bracing wind, contemplating how unnatural the storm seemed to be. Patting herself down, the woman quickly sped off to her quarters once more, wishing to get out of the cold that the infirmary was now subjected to. Shutting the door with a click, she didn't consider the unnaturalness of the storm any further, or her inability to cast anything on the windows or comatosed girl, either not caring enough or too tired to contemplate anything further.

Harry Potter slunk down the hall, fingers coated with crystalized ice as he bent the storm to his will, teeth sharp and dangerous as he grinned devilishly.

_Alright Granger, let’s see what this potion can do._

* * *

**Ginny,**

**I hope your second year at Hogwarts is treating you well! You seemed so very homesick last year, I’m glad that things managed to become easier to bear. Either way, I miss you and your brothers terribly, and beg that you all would** **_please_ ** **come back home for Christmas this year. I know that you want to stay at the school, but with Sirius Black running around I feel that it would be safer for you to come home for the hols, regardless of what the ministry says about his potential corpse.**

**On another note, while I know that he seems intimidating dear, you really must speak to little Harry Potter sometime! I've heard from the headmaster that he seems very lonely in Slytherin, and your brother certainly doesn't help by always antagonizing the poor boy. He could do with a good friend and a warm shoulder to lean on, just a suggestion!**

**With all my love, Mum.**

**~**

**Mum,**

**Thank you for the chocolate fudge, Ron stole a lot of it though, could you send some more? I've made friends with a few girls in my year, and Percy is nicer to hang around now that he’s bogged down with Head Boy duties, so I’m more or less well enough. It's absolutely frightful what happened to the tower though, but I’m worried about Hemione Granger more than Black actually breaking in, she still hasn't woken up and Ron is just as rude and loud as before! I never realized how pleasant he acted with her around till the accident, do you think he fancies her? You know none of us want to come home for the hols, Hogwarts christmas is far too special to pass up, though I do miss you and christmas dinner at the Burrow terribly.**

**Potter seems nice enough from a distance, but whenever I approach him he gets a nasty look, like I’ve insulted him in some way! I think the slytherins are telling him things about our family, since he doesn't seem to like me or Ron all that much. Though, I have seen him talking to the twins a few times, I wonder how they managed that? Anyway, I would love to be friends with him, but how am I meant to talk to someone who obviously doesn't like me?**

**-Ginny.**

**~**

**Sweetheart,**

**I’ve sent a letter to your brother to stop eating your fudge, hopefully he stops that nonsense now. I’m so sorry about that dear! I've inclosed another batch with this letter to make up for it. It's good that you’re making friends! Though I ask that you tell Percy to slow down some, he doesn't seem to know when to take a break from his studies.**

**In the case of Harry Potter, I’m so sorry that he seems to dislike you love! I know children can be cruel, and that Malfoy boy he’s always hanging around must be an awful influence. However, that just means that he needs you more than ever, you could set him straight dear, of that I have no doubt.**

**Much love, Mum.**

**~**

**Mum,**

**Thank you for the fudge, Ron seemed awfully cross as he watched me eat them, but he really needs to slow down with the food or he might start putting on weight! He’s almost as tall as Potter as is, which is quite impressive (have I told you how tall Harry Potter is? I barely come up to his elbow!). Anyway, I tried to get Percy to go on a stroll around the black lake with me, but he refused. I don't think anyone but you could get him to put down his homework and relax.**

**I want to go talk to Potter, really I do, but I can never get to him without having to first go through a bunch of mini Death Eaters to do it! I wish there was a way to get him to like me immediately so I don't have to keep waiting for him to be alone, it's hard to talk to someone when they have so many evil bodyguards!**

**Love, Ginny.**

**P.S. The strangest thing happened last night, the winds outside were so strong that they apparently burst open the windows in the infirmary! When the mediwitch got in there early this morning, the entire place was covered in several feet of snow, and the strangest part was that someone had cast several anti-countercurse spells on the windows so it was impossible to cast anything on them. Isn't that odd?**

**~**

**Dearest,**

**Ronald is in need for a healthy diet anyway, from Percy’s letters I have been told he eats nothing but meat and sweets. I worry for his health if that's all he's having for meals. I had no idea that Harry Potter was that tall! It's quite strange, as while James had been above average height Lily was never a particularly tall woman, I wonder where he gets it from?**

**Speaking of which, I have found something that might help you gain his affections-as well as his trust-quite quickly! Now I know you’re young, but it's awfully obvious that what you are feeling for the boy is love! Just pour three drops of it in his pumpkin juice, I’m sure everything will workout in your favor dear.**

**I love you!**

**-Mum**

**P.S. That is certainly bizarre, perhaps it was a prank gone wrong? Either way, I wouldn't worry too terribly about it dearest.**

Ginny looked down at the small box that had come with her mother's letter curiously, pulling away the pink ribbon that was tied firmly around it. Grasping the lid, she lifted it up and peered inside, gasping softly at the contents before hurriedly re-covering it and racing up the stairs, bolting from the common room and up into her dorm. Peering around the room, she sighed in relief as she found that her dorm-mates were nowhere to be seen-likely still at dinner or walking about the castle. Locking the door, Ginny jumped onto her bed and closed the curtains ightly, cutting off the view in and allowing herself some extra privacy.

Opening the little box once more, the girl pulled a small, pink glass bottle out from where it had been nestled in its protective casing, reading the label that stood out blatantly against the mother-of-pearl sheen the liquid sported.

Amortentia.

While not expressly illegal, she would get into a world of trouble for attempting to use a love potion on the heir of an old house like the Potters. Something about line theft or other such tosh. Ginny scoffed, if the potion was just going to make him realize how good she would be for him, then was it really taking away his free will? Her mum always spoke of how wonderful and caring she was, Harry Potter deserved someone kind and pleasant that would love him and keep those slytherin death eaters away.

Ginny had spent her entire childhood reading about Harry Potter, the children's books about his adventures had been her lullabies and entertainment all through her early years. Her mum was a constant source of comfort and support as she learned of his unfortunate sorting, and never once called her crush silly or impossible-quite the opposite in fact-as her mother worked tirelessly in an effort to make her dreams of a relationship with the boy more and more possible.

Turning her attention back to the potion, Ginny contemplated just what to do with it. There was the issue of quantity of course, as her mother had said only three droplets, despite that being an obnoxiously small amount. She could only guess that her mum wanted her to slowly push the effects onto him-probably because using too much would make the effects overly obvious to an outside observer and more likely to be discovered as fabricated. However, Ginny wanted to be absolutely certain he would actually speak to her, and considering that Potter currently looked at her as if she was the mud on his boots, Ginny decided that five drops would be much more effective.

Sighing, she set the bottle back into the box carefully, leaning over and nestling it between her diary and candy stash inside her bedside drawer. Settling against her headboard, little Ginny started to plan. It would be difficult to get the potion into his pumpkin juice, perhaps she could just put some into mum’s chocolate fudge and owl it to him?

Leaning back further, Ginny daydreamed of green eyes and wedding bells, not thinking for even a moment that her plan might fail her, or that her mother was playing her right into dangerously sharp claws. 

No, as Molly Weasley happily pottered away at the burrow, dreaming of large mansions and vaults filled to the brim with gold, she didn’t stop to consider that giving her twelve year old daughter a powerful love potion was foolhardy, too excited at the prospect of assuring that her family returned to the riches she grew up with. The Prewetts were a wealthy, strong family, and her fall from grace still filled Molly with quiet fury. Oh yes, Molly Weasley had been planning since day one to have her daughter become Lady Potter, and her efforts seemed to have finally bore fruit. She had read Ginny's letter and immediately jumped on the girl’s obvious crush, packaging up an amortentia bottle with the utmost care and sending it off with a carefully worded letter. 

No, the thought didn't even cross her mind, and as the Weasley women plotted away, Fate moved a pawn one space forward, waiting patiently for it to be ultimately taken by the man opposite of her.

Death grinned savagely from across the table, willfully moving his king into position-as if a snake poised to strike-the black sheen of the chess piece stark against his pale fingers. Fate and Death disagreed occasionally on the nuances of this new timeline, things like who should die and who would be allowed to live, but both could attest to this poor chess piece's fate being firmly set in stone.

The Weasley women dreamed, and a white pawn fell from the game board with a resounding _thunk_ onto the cold stone floor below, its death as absolute as it was inevitable.

* * *

Blaise paced through the dorm room, biting his nails as the seconds dragged on. It had been a… _trying_ fortnight since the first Hogsmeade visit, and as the days slipped into December he started to feel the full effects of not fulfilling the necessary sacrifice. Loki had warned him that the longer he waited the more he would hurt, but Blaise hadn't realized the extent of that promise until he started vomiting up vines and bloodied flowers in the loo between his classes.

Daphne had noticed his distress, and had attempted to interrogate him at Hogsmeade through the guise of dragging him off to Madam Puddifoot’s. It had been an agonizing half hour that he sat there in the uncomfortable wicker seat as she tried to glean any sort of information from his dilapidated condition and glassy eyes. He had repeatedly said that he was just sick, that he needed to sleep and that she was infringing on his right to get a viral infection by insinuating that it was anything but that, and that she was awfully rude for insinuating that he was up to anything devious.

Eventually, she had stormed off after screaming _“I'm just trying to help you, Zabini!”_ leaving him shivering and angry as he tried to tamp down the bile slowly rising up his esophagus. Blaise knew she didn't believe a word that he said, and-knowing Daphne-she wouldn't stop till she knew what was truly going on.

Truthfully, if he had just gotten over himself and done the deed a month ago none of this would have happened, but he had put it off in the guise of needing to prepare, and now he was running out of time. His nerve was wavering. Blaise started to question if it would be so bad if he let time run out-let the vines rip his heart to pieces. Would death be preferable to murder?

In a fit of guilt and desperation after she had ignored him for two entire weeks, Blaise had asked Daphne to meet him in his dorm, saying that he needed to talk to her. 

He needed to tell _someone._ Blaise knew that Harry probably would be understanding-hell, the crazy bastard would probably be _supportive._ It wouldn't surprise him if Harry had a bloody skull collection of his past murder victims. That was the thing though, he needed to know the thoughts of someone who he was certain had morals stronger than steel-someone who would tell him what was right or wrong. Loki spoke with twisted words and double meanings, it was impossible to discern between what he was actually thinking and what was just Loki was hissing platitudes in his ear.

So, he was going to come clean to Daphne, and tell her everything that had happened over the past year. Not only because he hated being ignored by her, but because he wasn’t going to last much longer if he didn’t make a decision soon, and her disgust in him would no doubt make the decision for him. 

“Blaise?”

If only he could build up the nerve to actually speak.

She closed the door behind her, the click of the lock as it slid into place synonymous with the thump of dirt on his half-buried coffin. He swallowed thickly, his foot thumping against the shag rug nervously as he met her eyes from across the room. Daphne looked deeply concerned, her dark blue eyes watching him with caution from the door. He heard a hiss, a question whispered from behind him as if testing the air. He knew that Daphne didn't hear it-knew she _couldn’t_ hear it-but he winced all the same, as if the twin snakes would reveal his past and future sins to her.

“I-” he swallowed, trying not to bite his nails as she stepped further into the room. “I need some advice.”

She nodded slowly, cautiously, as she settled down at the foot of his bed, watching him fidget where he stood, her hands poised in her lap as if discussing business deals with a potential investor. Ever the businesswoman.

“I can do advice.”

Blaise nodded jerkily, rubbing the back of his neck as his foot continued to tap. The hissing raised in volume.

“If-well if you had to choose between doing something you thought was wrong-but that would keep you alive-or doing the right thing at the expense of your life, what would you do?”

Daphne’s gaze sharpened, her spine stiffening incrementally.

“Blaise… are you in danger?”

“No! I just-well… what would you do?”

He needed to know, if anything, he needed to know this _one thing._

She stared, as if trying to figure him out. His foot kept tapping, subconsciously trying to drown out the hissing as it got closer and closer. Daphne moved to rise from her seat, and Blaise was forced to stand there and watch as she walked slowly towards him-as if trying to soothe a wounded animal-and grasped his left hand gently. Turning the back of his hand skyward, she looked away from his eyes to observe the tattoo, brushed a soft finger over the knotted snakes sunk into his skin. His breath hitched, holding back tears as his world threatened to collapse.

“Is he testing you?”

Blaise felt as though vines were tightening in his lungs, making it difficult to breath as she observed his mark with careful eyes. It just wasn't _fair,_ how was it that out of all the people who seemed to care about him, the only one to actually worry was the one person he was absolutely certain would be disgusted by his past, present, and future actions. Harry would just be _intrigued_ by everything that was happening to him, questioning Blaise about the logistics of sacrifice, ever the scholar but never a comfort. Theo would no doubt just call him a fool and walk away, too sure of his own superiority to warrant Blaise the time of day. Draco wasn’t even an option-neither was Tracey-they were both too focused on their own goals to worry about whatever he had gotten into.

He nodded stiffly, feeling her grip tighten around his fingers.

“What kind of test.”

“Daph-”

“I need to understand the entire situation before making a decision, _Blaise.”_

He took a breath, his resolve being turning on its head as he prepared to back down-to run away. Quite suddenly however, the vines receded from his lungs, almost as if granting him permission to speak. _Go on, see what she will think of you,_ it said, as his fears of her disgust and revulsion bubbled to the surface. He swallowed, taking a deep breath and-

told her everything.

It was like a dam had burst, every little thing that he had done since summer break before second year tumbling out of his mouth like a waterfall. Finding the little green book, his great great grandfather’s words, Harry hunting him down only to give him support, the three pledges, his seclusion over the summer and how he felt locked in his bedroom, how he felt sometimes where noone was around and the emptiness sent him back to that prison cell. He found himself sitting cross legged on the floor with his head in his hands, blubbering on about how he felt that everyone he knew except for Daphne herself was slowly floating away from him, how he felt that he was being left behind to flounder with nothing but Loki for comfort. How he had been coughing up leaves and tiny little flowers stained with blood since October. How he had been told to either go against his very nature or suffer the consequences of not following through. She sat with him, face unreadable but eyes devastated as he poured his heart out into the rug beneath them.

When he was finally done, and all he could do was silently cry, she hugged him softly, humming an unknown tune as he rested his head in the soft skin of her neck.

“Blaise, if you’re truly asking what I would do if I were your shoes, then I can tell you that, but I want you to understand that what I would do is not what I want _you_ to do.”

He nodded jerkily, taking a shaky breath from the crook of her neck. He needed to know.

“My answer is quite simple: I would end my life in a heartbeat if it meant sparing someone else’s.” 

He wasn't surprised, she was more hufflepuff than slytherin at times, if anyone would burn themselves up to keep another warm, it would be Daphne.

“-but that’s me, not you.”

“Then what _is_ me?”

She pulled away, her eyes piercing into his soul as she spoke, “listen to me Blaise, your life is worth far more to me then any sort of moral compass I may wield. Sure, I might be willing to sacrifice my life to save someone, but never yours-never your life.”

He stared, confusion bleeding into realization as she continued. “I wouldn't say that I would do the same as you have done, because I firmly believe that I wouldn’t be able to ever pledge to a god, but I know you decided that it was what _you_ needed, and if this is what you have to do then so _be it.”_

She leaned in close, her hands gripping his with a ferocity that shocked him.

“Your life is worth more to me than what is good and bad, and if you need to kill the mudblood to live then I will _happily_ give you the means to do it.”

There was a certain kind of morbid irony that overtook him as she handed him a sharp ritual dagger, having returned from her dorm after leaving him for a short time. She explained that, on Harry’s request, the both of them had found and subsequently opened up an old weapons room somewhere in the castle, and she had taken the dagger from there for a ritual that she had yet to perform. The knife, which was curved like a scythe and practically dripping with dark magic, was supposed to be for ritualistic sacrifices, and would kill morbidly if smoothly.

“We all make decisions Blaise, and sometimes the path we choose is difficult, and we need to lean on someone else as we walk them.”

Soft fingers. Kind eyes. Sharp blade.

“I’ll always stand next to you, even if what stands on your other side is something that scares me.”

The dagger felt familiar in his hands, and he remembered the kitchen knife his mother wielded to slice her fourth husband to ribbons. Blaise remembered how he had wished to never become like her, how he had wanted to be able to say his family’s sins didn't define his own. He remembered the red liquid staining the ancient marble below husband number five as he collapsed into a pool of vomit and crimson bile. Poison and daggers. Blood and bone.

“I know this is hard for you, but if you really are getting destroyed from the inside out for letting it go on so long, I won't let you put his death off any longer.”

It seemed that murder coursed through his veins, and the sinful blood of his ancestors would eventually seep into his skin and take root there permanently, regardless of how fast he ran from it.

She closed his fingers around the hilt, her gaze sorrowful but ever determined. 

“I may be willing to sacrifice myself to save another, but I won't _ever_ let you do the same.”

Cold metal gleamed in the low light.

Twin snakes hissed happily from the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In all honesty I think that Blaise and Daphne are shaping up to be the most tragic couple in this fic. Sure, Harry and Draco are a hot mess and Luna and Theo are just chaos incarnate, but... well, spoilers (〜￣▽￣)〜  
> P.S. The reason Loki backed down so suddenly is cuz he knew Daphne would eventually be supportive of the stabby stabby business once getting the full picture, I don't think that was super obvious but an explanation into that smack-dab in the middle of a touchy feely moment would have been kinda jarring.


	60. Baby, it's Cold Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December falls away in a flurry of school work and an increasing need to know the drama that one is not privy to.

Harry had noticed a shift between Daphne and Blaise, of a closeness that came seemingly out of nowhere. He watched with mild amusement during classes and meals as they plotted away at something, their heads bent together conspiratorially over notes or food as if they were speaking of normal things and not some plot or another. Going against his better judgement, he left them to it, instead focusing inwards onto himself as midterms approached at a speedy pace. Weeks seemed to bleed together, and as he went about the daily passings of life, Harry managed to get quite the curious picture of what was going on behind the scenes.

Granger had woken up the day after he drugged her with the potion, and had almost immediately had complications with her injuries. Along with a rather nasty phantom leg, she went nearly catatonic with shock at the reveal of not only her missing limb, but the rest of her injuries, which ranged from the nearly healed scar that had once been the spot in her abdomen where she was impaled, to deep gashes and long-healed broken bones. What made her the most agitated however, was the knowledge that she had been in a month-long coma, and had very little time to prepare for the ensuing exams. 

Of course, her agitation grew to monstrous amounts when it was finally realized by both her and the teachers that her time turner was most certainly missing. It had been assumed that, with the rest of her luggage, it had been moved safely from her dorm with the rest of the house’s things when all of Gryffindor tower was being evacuated of personal items, and the realization that it had likely been destroyed in the catastrophe was one met with a considerable amount of stress. Time turners weren’t handed out all willy nilly by the ministry after all, and considering how much time and effort went into creating them, the Department of Mysteries would be far more than a little cross with the idea of having to replace it.

It seemed to Harry that Dumbledore had first tried several avenues of brushing the ‘destroyed’ time turner's lack of existence under the rug, but all seemed to fail quite quickly. It likely didn't help matters that Granger was being forced to either drop a few classes in order to gain a manageable schedule that wouldn’t make a time turner necessary, or request a second one herself. Naturally, the irrationality-curse ladened girl was quite firm on the latter option, and had seemed to have caused the teachers endless nights of arguments and drunken rages over the idea. Considering that several cloaked ministry officials had been seen going in and out of the hospital wing, Harry could only assume that the government had eventually found out about their lost artifact, and were in the process of questioning Granger about it. Harry deeply hoped that she would get expelled for the whole mess, but severely doubted it, she was too far up Dumbledore’s ass for that concept to even leave the planning phase. 

Regardless, Harry himself was using the time turner itself to its full potential, spinning about the place for various exploits and generally feeling very smug while doing so. With his memories of Halloween fully restored, he had taken several days to rewrite his plans for the third bloody time, going over what had happened and the realizations that he had had with thinly veiled disgust in himself. It was getting exhausting, trying to figure out how to do things while also knowing that there were gods out there that knew exactly what he would eventually do, who were only a word away but unlikely to say a peep.

He had decided though, that Dumbledore would have to go much sooner than anticipated. Harry would have preferred going up against the bastard when he was much, _much_ older-an adult, preferably-but he was slowly realizing that he wouldn’t survive to see his twenties if he went with that cautious of an approach.

“Blast it all…”

“Wot?”

He glanced in Draco’s direction. “Nothing, sorry.”

The other boy shrugged, going back to his charms homework.

He and Draco had seemed to patch things up well enough after the ‘shrieking shack incident’ as it was being called, and while the shorter boy had been snippy with… well, everyone, he wasn’t burning down buildings, so Harry considered it a step in the right direction. Regardless of that though, the soul bond was becoming more and more of a problem for them, and Harry severely doubted now that Draco even _knew_ about it. The constant itch at his magic was incredibly annoying, and he was sure that Draco was receiving the brunt of the discomfort-considering it was his side of the bond that wasn’t connected. However, Harry had no idea just how to go about telling Draco about it, as he was not one for emotions in the first place and believed that he would just make a bigger mess of things. Hilariously, he had actually gone to Theo for advice on it, and the bastard had laughed at him.

_“You think I’m capable of giving relationship advice? Who exactly do you take me for?”_

_Harry grumbled, his cheek in one palm as he slouched against the couch. “You're a better option than what I’ve got, which is my own malfunctioning brain and considerable lack of knowledge in relationships. And you've got a… face, I bet the ladies and lads fall over themselves like hungry wolves to get a piece of you on the daily, you've got to have some sort of knowledge bouncing around up there.”_

_Theo rolled his eyes, placing a well-worn bookmark into his most recent obsession, which appeared to be something about alchemy. Harry glared at the book and then the boy holding it, this bastard really had to stop figuring things out._

_“Listen mate, I'm about as approachable on a good day as you are on a bad one, I'll admit that I’ve-what did you call it? Got a face? Yea, I've got one, but I’m not finding all that much use out of it.”_

_Harry resisted the urge to point out Tracey’s apparent obsession with his hair, or Luna’s almost constant presence, not wanting to deal with the ensuing rant about all the reasons neither of them are interested in him-Harry had heard it far too many times already._

_“Well you’ve had to have read books on the psychology behind romance, maybe you could point me in that direction? I'd likely find more use out of something like that anyhow.”_

_“I haven't, and I don’t want to become your own personal library directory, so if you’re really that interested in psychology, you can go find something yourself.”_

Harry had left the conversation annoyed and bookless, too stubborn to actually look for something useful in the library but still wanting to be mad about it. Looking about the dorm room in which he now sat, Harry found himself feeling stifled.

Huffing, he fell off of his bed, muttering something about taking a walk to Draco before throwing on his cloak and disappearing from sight.

“Be back before dinner.”

“Yes mum.”

“Oh sod off.”

He chucked, pulling the door open and closed slowly while making ‘OooOOOooooOooo’ noises as he did so. Draco finally looked up from his parchment, watching the door move on its own accord with an unimpressed look on his face.

“You’re such a muggle sometimes, you know that Potter? Now get out of here before I try and throw a shoe at you.”

“Yea yea I'm going.”

Sirius was also a matter of… _serious_ debate around Hogwarts, as the burnt corpse from the shrieking shack had indeed been ‘confirmed’ to be his. Harry highly suspected that Fudge or another equally idiotic politician had given the foresentics department a hefty raise to say that it was Sirius. Considering the amount of burnt fat on the corpse, Harry doubted anyone in the underfunded department actually believed it. As it was, Sirius being a dead man actually gave him a lot of leeway later on in life, and Harry wanted to hunt the bastard down at some point during the next few months to have a long chat about how to properly dispose of a body, among other things. Harry didn't expect the man to be easy to find, but (as he was slowly learning) the more he gave in to the wendigo’s wants the easier it became to use it’s powers. He was already employing those abilities in several different ways, the most notable attempt being the first of December, when he finally managed to control the weather without needing to be in the throes of a near-death experience. He hadn’t been quite positive that it would work, but was absolutely floored when it did, and spent many of his extra hours with the time turner attempting other things. He had gotten awfully decent at weather manipulation, and had been using that to make it as cold as he liked outside, mostly because he was still feeling vindictive against Sirius and that the colder it was the more comfortable he felt. Voice mimicry was slow going, as he couldn't just think of the person and speak, he had to either know their voice well enough to replicate it, or have eaten their voice box. Because of this rather unfortunate requirement (which was likely due to his own human magic holding him back, as wendigo were not known to have that kind of weakness), he had only managed to fully mimic Draco and Pettigrew’s voices, which didn't do much for him except amusement at making Draco’s voice admit he was short.

Harry sighed, finally reaching a door into the outside. Pushing it open, he trudged through the cold, his mind returning to the various things he had to do now that his mindscape was (mostly) reconstructed and the wendigo was (mostly) under control. One of the first things on that mental list was to figure out if Tom hadn’t gone absolutely batshit insane in the chamber, as the wendigo had been forcing him to stay cut off from Harry and by extension the rest of his mindscape. The second thing was to make sure Tom didn't kill him in the process of explaining all that had been happening in his absence.

Harry didn't really have anything else to do past that point, as he still wasn't entirely convinced he would survive the encounter with his father.

Instead of thinking any harder about it, Harry turned his attention to the wendigo as it prowled into the forefront of his mind, hissing and screeching quietly and generally making its presence known.

_I really need to come up with a name for you._

He received a laugh that sounded something like Draco’s in response.

_Is that a yes?_

No answer, he was going to assume it was indeed a yes.

Reaching the treeline, Harry picked up his pace, sludging through the snow in what he expected looked like a pained shamble instead of a jog. Looking back, he focused hard and sent a surge of magic out, feeling the wind answer obediently, brushing across the snowy landscape and sweeping the proof of his footprints and their path towards the forest away as if never having existed. Nodding happily, he continued on, occasionally jumping fallen logs and giant boulders in his effort to keep moving in the snow. He had been trying to find Thasin, as while he wasn't all that worried about the snake, the centaurs had been saying things about her diet that were both confusing and potentially damaging to the forest’s ecosystem. He had initially heard ‘fairy-eating snake’ and thought they had lost their marbles, but after reading about the consumption of magical creatures by muggle animals and the effects it had on their DNA, he had been more open to the idea of hunting her down.

“Point me, Thasin.”

It had been months since he had last seen her, the last time being the night he went to meet Luna in the astronomy tower at the beginning of the year, and apparently she had grown a tad since then. His wand swung around for a moment, as if thinking about it, before locking onto something to the north-west of him. Carrying on, Harry kept an eye out for any movement that might be something dangerous, green eyes scanning the frosty underbrush for a now-magical snake of considerable length. Originally, he would have laughed at the idea of trying to find a snake in the middle of winter, considering the fact that the animal was cold-blooded, but Bane still spoke of her various attacks on the wildlife even now, so he could only assume that she had gotten over her genetic drawbacks.

_“~Hmm… something smells familiar.~”_

He halted in place, turned slowly while glancing upwards to the tree’s canopy. He watched, flabbergasted and a little scared, as a _very_ large and extremely colorful snake weaved her way around a low-hanging branch, tasting the air with curiosity. Thasin had… well to be completely frank she was bloody massive, at _least_ seven feet long. Just… absolutely, obnoxiously, impossibly long for her species. When he had first met her, the snake was the average length for a california garter, that being three feet, and hadn’t grown at all until the previous school year, in which she notably gained a foot. This, however, was just absurd, not only did her length have a rather dramatic change, but so did her coloring. He observed her with baited breath, making note of all her changes before even daring to blink. Her bright red head, who’s color trailed down and turned into something of a blocky, geometric pattern as it traveled down her side, had turned from a rather gaudy neon to something resembling Tom’s eyes, and the long neon stripe of blue that traveled down her back was now distinctly glowing, as if storing excess magic from her meals. He wondered if her organs had also changed to absorb magic, it would explain how she had managed to grow so long, as it took a certain kind of gland to absorb another creature’s magic after killing it.

_“~Hello Thasin.~”_

Her head swung in his direction, tongue darting out as her eyes gazed unseeing over where he was hidden by the cloak.

_“~Harry? Where are you?~”_

Cautiously, he pulled the cloak off, watching as she reared back slightly in shock. They stared at each other for a moment, before Thasin slowly moved from the perch, silently wrapping around Harry’s neck, shoulders, stomach, and really just trying to cover as much of his body with her own that was physically possible.

_“~Harrrryyyy... I missed you!~”_

_“~It's good to see you Thasin. Merlin, you've grown.~”_

_“~I'm not done yet,~”_ she tasted the air again, this time nearly an inch from his nose, _“~and neither are you it seems~”_

Harry laughed, _“~I would hope not.~”_

He stayed with Thasin for a few hours, explaining some things that he had been doing and relaying a message to her from the centaurs that basically said ‘stop eating all the fairies, you're ruining the ecosystem, you menace’ or something to that effect. She seemed to believe that she would be fully grown by that summer, and requested that she be taken back to Surrey with him instead of going to Malfoy manor when that time came. It was a ways off, but he agreed nonetheless, even if hiding a seven foot long snake in his room would be something of a struggle.

Leaving her to the cold and wilderness, Harry threw his cloak back on and trudged through the snow, feeling the need to return to Draco grow stronger by the second.

* * *

Midterm exams passed like a light summer breeze for Harry, and with it came the loss of his friends as they all boarded the Hogwarts express to go back home for yule. Harry had opted to stay for the holidays, as his family had decided to run off to Hawaii of all places to celebrate Christmas. It had taken some strongly worded letters from both ends of the argument, but in the end he won and was allowed to stay at Hogwarts. There was no way Harry was going to leave his winter paradise to go burn alive in Hawaii, regardless of what his aunt had to say about the beaches there. He was already having to deal with his incomplete and rather agitated soul bond stretching the distance between him and Draco, which was already shaping up to be something only a few rings down from unbearable. 

To take his mind off of the impending catastrophe that was his not-even-existent love life, Harry threw himself headfirst into his side projects, which ended up being a continuous battle between studying Granger in the hopes of figuring out the golden potion, hiding from Ginny Weasley as she had (for some reason) decided that stalking him was a fun pastime, and trying desperately to get on good terms with his demon.

It was shaping up to be a very stressful Christmas for Harry Potter.

This was embodied perfectly on Christmas day, as Harry woke up to a mountain of presents and a prominent headache. Stumbling down the stairs with a cup of black coffee and the presents floating along behind him, he slumped down next to Victoria White, who was glaring quite angrily at another girl in her year that Harry had never bothered to learn the name of, who merely cowered in response.

“Merry Christmas, Potter, or would you rather yuletide-or maybe even hanukkah? We’re all so very _inclusive_ and _respectful_ of other people in Slytherin house after all.” Her glare sharpened at the unnamed girl, who winced. An argument about blood status then, lovely.

He took a long, drawn out sip of his coffee, savoring the bitter taste as he looked down at his respectful pile of presents with mild curiosity.

“No offense White, but if you paid me half a million quid just to say I gave a shite about the holidays, I would lie to your face and use the money to wipe my arse.”

The girl looked about ready to proclaim him a messiah, when the dungeon bat himself strode into the room, looking all the world like he would prefer to dance starkers in the winter snowstorm outside instead of grace them with his unwanted presence.

“If you would exercise some tact in your choice of words Potter, I would be eternally grateful.”

“I'm sure my mother could say the same to you, sir.”

The reply made the potions professor stumble in surprise, but (skilled occlumens that he was) Snape showed no outwards reaction to the jab besides a raised eyebrow and a grunt. Harry chided himself mentally for such a flub, knowing that there was no way he should have known that Snape had called his mother a mudblood.

_Whatever, oblivivation is still an option I have yet to exploit._

“Moving on, children.” Snape stood, appearing just as self important as he probably felt, holding court over two pre-teens and one sleep deprived time traveler. “The headmaster has requested that everyone eat Christmas breakfast in the great hall this morning, considering that very few people have stayed at the school, he hopes that it would be used as a way to bridge gaps between houses.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, in his current (incredibly agitated, and uncomfortably Draco-less) state he was more likely to kill someone in another house than play nice, and he already decided to consider the breakfast optional.

“This is not an optional event.”

_Not with that attitude._

“Oh what's the headmaster gonna do, expel us on the grounds of bad camaraderie?” Shockingly, it was actually Victoria that spoke up against this ruling, appearing about as appreciative of the ‘house unity’ as Harry felt.

Snape raised an eyebrow, “you are free to gain as many detentions as you wish, Miss. White, but I will be cross if this willful rebellion of yours sullies our chances at the house cup.”

“And then you’ll, what, give me a detention? Or perhaps take house points?”

The unnamed girl snickered, before being silenced by White’s icy glare. Snape, long suffering and used to snooty rich kids, simply rolled his eyes.

“I am the messenger, not the executioner, Miss. White. Do as you will.”

And then he was gone, swirling out of the commons as if his cape was made of spider silk, dramatic and expensive and far beyond what was necessary for keeping in heat.

Harry rolled his eyes at the man’s antics, chugging down the rest of his coffee with a sigh. Groaning at the concept of movement, he reached for his first present of the day. Theo had gotten him a self help book, which he immediately threw into the nearest fire with a grimace. Blaise had sent along a pair of winter boots with a note proclaiming to get a life, and Daphne had gifted a matching set of winter gloves. It seemed the pair had correlated their christmas presents, how cute. Tracey, alternatively, had sent him various muggle tank tops, with a note saying that he needed more winter apparel, she was shaping up to be his favorite (besides Draco). He set all of the clothes aside, looking lastly at the small box that held Draco’s present.

It appeared to be a wooden ring box, held together with a small ribbon and not much else. Tearing off the neat bow that held the two pieces flush together, he popped off the lid to reveal a small note, which said nothing except for ‘put it on’. Glancing at the contents, Harry smiled slightly at the piece of jewelry inside. 

While the two of them had gotten in the habit of painting their nails matching colors, and they already had the earrings tying their appearances together, neither of them had broached the subject of magical jewelry since Lady Malfoy gifted him his bracelet last christmas, which he still wore every day. However, there was a large array of metals that could hold enchantments and some such, so it was very popular to enchant jewelry for special things. One of the most recent developments in jewelry enchantments was an exciting strane of communicative charms, which allowed for a modicum of different communications through jewelry. The simple but elegant ring inside of the box appeared to be one such enchanted adornment, though he had no clue what it could be communicating between him and Draco. 

Mentally shrugging, Harry pulled the ring out and set it onto his right pointer finger, directly opposite of his invisible slytherin heir ring. Jolting slightly, he felt the familiar thumping of a heartbeat strum through the ring, picking up as its pair on Draco’s finger registered that it was being worn.

“Bloody hell.”

It seemed that Draco was just as obsessed with heartbeats as the wendigo was, as Harry sat and felt the steady thrumming vibrate through his skin with something akin to shock. After nearly a week without the other boy, Harry felt a sort of incredible relief wash over him at feeling his heartbeat.

“Oh that’s nice, what kind of gems are those?”

Victoria was admiring the ring with careful eyes, unknowing of the thumping heart that pulsed through it. Harry looked at it with her, just now observing the inlaid stones and what they could be. Realizing very quickly, he rolled his eyes at Draco’s predictable poshness.

“They’re the three birthstones of June.”

Draco was only about a month older than him, and had on many occasions flaunted the three stones of June with the idea that having more than one birthstone made him better than the rest of them. Truthfully, pearl, alexandrite, and moonstone were all relatively average stones, and the quantity of them didn't really make them any better in quality, but Harry didn't want to say something like that in the hearing range of a boy who was perfectly capable of throwing fireballs at his face. Moonstone was quite pretty, sure, but that was besides the point.

“This ring is actually one of a pair, I believe the other one has rubies inlaid as well.”

Rubies were for July, and that observation was more of a guess, considering that Draco likely went with birth months for the rings, going for a symbolic meaning of some such tosh. Either way, the familiar thrumming sent a wave of calm through his soul, and he slouched against the plush couch happily, feeling more relaxed than he had the entire week of yule break.

* * *

The relief from feeling Draco’s heartbeat almost immediately turned to intense agitation as he watched Ginevra Weasley sit down next to him in the great hall, her stupid ginger hair whacking him in the face as she wiped it around in a way he was sure she thought was sexily, but just made her look stupid since she was, well… twelve. Deciding that he would sooner eat literal dog shite before acknowledging her existence, he turned back to the front and waited for the food to appear, executing considerable self control as her eyes bore a hole in the side of his head. 

In the end, no power on earth could make Snape allow rule breaking and loss of decorum in his house, and the three unwilling slytherins were carted off to the great hall under the orders to play nice or get made into potions ingredients. Trying to distract himself from the ensuing agony that would soon befal his already unpleasant morning, Harry focused onto Victoria and Luna, who had sat down together and seemed intent on ignoring each other. It seemed that some people were made of too many sharp edges for even Luna to deal with. Which was honestly lucky for the rest of them, Harry couldn't imagine a world with those two teamed up that didn't end in a blaze of fire.

“You’re Harry Potter, right?”

_Deep breaths Potter, you lived with Tom Riddle in your head for over a decade, you can survive this one, agonizing conversation._

“Yeah.”

He instantly regretted even speaking, as the girl seemed to jump on the chance to be an absolute _menace._

“My name Ginny-well it's actually Ginevra Weasley, but Ginevra is such a pretentious name you know? Anyway-what's it like in Slytherin? I hope you don't mind me saying but you don't seem like a Slytherin to me-much too sweet.”

_I'm going to tear out your stomach and feed it to you._

“-but that's just what I think, do you ever wonder what it would be like to be in another house? I've always contemplated what it would be like, I think I'd make a nice Hufflepuff, I'm really loyal like that.”

She giggled in a way that grated his ears, fluttering her eyelashes as Albus _Fucking_ Dumbledore watched them happily from where he sat on his stupid golden throne, apparenly having decided to submit Harry to the seven layers of hell simultaneously.

“Anyway, I've always thought you were cool but never got to talk to you before now, so I thought it might be nice to break the ice and give a present of goodwill! It's also for christmas spirit and all that.”

He glanced down at where she held out a parcel of Molly Weasley’s famous fudge.

_Blast._

If there was anything he regretted about his last life the most, it was not getting the recipe for that brilliant bloody fudge before he croaked. Harry had been addicted to the stuff before going cold turkey during his hunt for the horcruxes, but the memories of the taste still came to him on occasion, deep cravings leaving him bothered and unsatisfied. To be completely honest with himself, Harry had contemplated breaking into the Burrow on numerous occasions to try and find it, the woman had to bake cocaine into the bloody things for them to be as addictive as they were.

“Cheers.”

Even his incredible hatred of the Weasleys and all they stood for couldn't get in between him and that chocolatey goodness, and he practically snatched the parcel out of the girl’s hands, setting it protectively onto his other side in case she decided to take it back. He missed the conspiratorial look on her face, mainly because he wanted to put the bitch out of his mind as quickly as physically possible.

As the small group at Hogwarts finally tucked into their breakfast, Death looked down at the fallen chess piece with interest, smiling as small cracks began to reveal themselves on the otherwise perfect surface, the white marble slowly fracturing as the clock started to tick down to zero. The time till utter destruction speeding up incrementally as a multitude of factors converged to seal a girl’s fate.

“How utterly devious of you, babe, I’m impressed.”

Fate smiled, cold green eyes gleaming under the low light.

“I aim to please.”

“Hardly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't done a chapter like this one in a long time, (that being compressing a month into one chapter) but to be completely honest, dragging December out would be a waste of everyone's time, as I never planned for it to be anything all that special. The real fun begins next chapter, when the students come back on the train ;P  
> (helpful reminder that Blaise has till the end of february to kill Flitch-Fletchy, and Daphne is forcing him to speed up his process for his own good.)


	61. The Devout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rome didn't fall in a day, but Troy most certainly did.

Draco had been having, by far, one of the worst yule breaks of his life.

Not only had he been forced to come home by his mother, but Harry had stayed at the school-adamantly refusing to galavant off to Hawaii or, merlin be damned, just spend the hols at Malfoy Manor with him. 

That was all that was bothering him really, the loss of Harry from his side, and the knowledge that his only reason for being in a truly _wretched_ mood was the loss of a near-emotionless bastard with a (well deserved) genus complex over the span of a two week period. Hell, he had to put a considerable amount of self control into not trying to force Persephone to carry him back to Hogwarts. For circe’s sake, he was a _wreck._

“This can't go on.”

He needed some sort of reprieve from the humiliating agony that he was facing for a whole fortnight, needed repreve for what was no doubt his penance for ever dairing to fall for the beautifully perfect _monster_ that was Hadrian James Potter.

“The gods must want me dead in the earth before my majority. They’ll likely toast to the coming festivities that my self-induced murder produces.”

“You mean suicide, Dragon.”

“Quiet mother, I am _trying_ to lament.”

She smiled at her needlepoint, pretending not to glance to where he was thrown across the couch.

“My apologies. What is causing you to lament?”

“An infinitesimal annoyance that has seen fit to befall me with a terrible amount of discomfort.”

The annoyance being a considerable lack of Harry Potter, and the terrible discomfort being an inconsolable ache in his chest and unbearably sleepless nights.

“My, if I had any doubts upon your character, I could almost say you appear troubled, my dear son.”

“If I am not troubled, then Helen of Troy was not beautiful.”

“Goodness, you've resorted to greek mythos. Tell me darling, what is the trouble in which you feel?”

His ‘troubled’ feelings were partially because of missing Harry an unnaturally large amount, and being bothered that he missed Harry said unnaturally large amount. As it was, a considerable amount of his problems seemed to stem from a severe oversight in which he allowed Harry to stay at the school despite feeling in his bones that the taller boy belonged firmly at his side instead.

“Homesickness.”

He settled further into the plush couch as his mother’s tinkling laugh breezed through the lounge. “I truly hate to agitate you further, Dragon, but you’re at home.”

He groaned, stretching out and waving his hand as if lazily replicating The Creation of Adam with his own body.

“A different home, mother, one that is irritatingly mobile and maddeningly stubborn in where it wishes to go.”

She raised a single eyebrow. “Are you Helen, my dear, or do you chase after her like Menelaus?”

“I'm afraid this is not an equitable situation.”

“So you are Paris?”

“Gods no!”

The metaphor was running away from him it seemed, and Draco grumbled unhappily as his mother laughed.

“I cannot help you with limited knowledge, Dragon.”

“I don't wish for help, I desire pity.”

She sighed, shaking her head as she returned to her needlepoint. “Well you are certainly succeeding in that goal.”

“Shall I raise a glass to my own brilliance?”

She rolled her eyes at him, watching with amusement as he pretended to raise an invisible glass to the heavens. Toasting to the gods as if he was not Icarus and Harry were not his wings.

“Or perhaps you are Narcissus and the object of your affections is his pond.”

“Of course not, I would never steal such a title from you mother.”

He sat, glaring at his presents as _they_ sat, unopened, only a foot from his outstretched hand. His father’s insistence on them all opening their gifts together had combined horribly with his rather nasty habit of sleeping in.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, Lucius Malfoy meandered into the room, his long hair put up in a messy bun and morning robe frumpled as if just thrown on in a rush.

“Good morning, you both.”

“Good morning dear.”

“It is near noon father, please design to cast an alarm next yule.”

Lucius glanced to his wife questionly, she waved him off with an exasperated smile.

“Come now Draco, it’s barely ten. Now stop your lamenting, you have _presents.”_

He did indeed, finding with mild disgust that Theo had gotten him an anger management book, which he promptly threw into the fire the moment both his parents looked away. Blaise, to his pleasant surprise, had gifted a rather elegant set of regency-style tunics, which he was positive Tracey would call ‘pirate-esque’, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. The girl herself had given him an unholy amount of muggle sweets, all of which would rot his teeth in no time at all. He snacked on something called a ‘Hershey’s’ as he tore open a letter from Greengrass, after waving his wand to cast a few detection spells to make sure it wasn’t jinxed of course. Peering inside, he pulled out a letter slowly, and opened it.

**Malfoy,**

**You continue to be an utter disappointment, congratulations in continuing your mediocrity.**

**Go eat mud, you useless pig.**

**Unpleasantly, Heiress Daphne M. Greengrass.**

He was pleasantly surprised that she hadn’t added anything like the venomous snake from his tenth birthday, or the wasps nest like last year, and felt slightly guilty at the obnoxiously large amount of electrified glitter that he had designed to shove into a small, timer-detonated gift box for her.

_Ah well, she can yell about it on the Hogwarts Express._

He reached for his last present, one that had Harry’s familiar elegant scrawl across the wrapping. With excitement, he ripped it open, peering down at a small book in confusion.

**Soul Bonds: an Eternity of Inconveniences with only Moderate Payoff**

Just as he was about to question the odd title, a thin silver ring inlaid with rubies that rested on his left ring finger started to heat up, a familiar heartbeat thumping steadily through his hand and into his arm like little beats of a drum. Harry’s heartbeat was different from anyone else’s in that regard, it was uneven but strong, as if it was simply an... _imitation_ of a heartbeat that wished to make a catchy beat instead of pump blood. He adored it though, the steady rhythm bringing him an embarrassingly large amount of comfort.

The book was set down for a moment, Draco ignoring it to instead enjoy the feeling of Harry’s heart beating through his hand, the cavernous hole in his chest diminishing slightly as he relaxed into the couches cushions.

* * *

Harry sped up to his dorm quickly after the christmas breakfast, exhausted and irritated with the constant chatter (and horrendous flirting. Honsely, the girl was _twelve,_ someone needed to tell her to cool it). Shrugging off his cloak, he sighed, standing in the middle of the dorm and trying to calm down, attempting to steady his irritated and jittered mind with only his logical mind and Draco’s steady heartbeat. 

Throwing himself onto Draco’s bed, he settled into pillows that smelled faintly of peppermint, feeling his muscles finally relax as he melted further into the plush feather pillows. With a sigh, he shifted onto his back, pulling apart the small parcel of Molly Weasley’s fudge happily. Grabbing a square of the heavenly chocolate, Harry nearly got a bite off until stopping, breathing in slowly as his eyebrows knotted together.

Sitting up, he sniffed the fudge with rising confusion, trying to place the smell that waffed off of it. It smelled of peppermint, with a distant whiff of what he could only describe as pine and Draco’s hair gel. He sat there, slightly perturbed for several moments as he tried to place the odd smells. It was strange, those kinds of smells were rather mundane, but all things that he associated with… His back stiffened, eyes widening as he put together the oddly specific aromas.

“That psycho bitch roofied my fudge with amortentia…”

Of course, it would have been stupid to attempt even _without_ him being Master of Death, but his immunity to compulsions and by extension love potions made the attempt not only foolhardy but incredibly insulting to his intelligence. Draco’s heartbeat picked up pace some, he could only assume the boy was off playing quidditch or something. 

_Draco..._

He felt a surge of hatred towards the youngest Weasley then, an inconsolable need to utterly _destroy_ her and everything she stood for. It was one thing to try and control him with potions, something that already sent shocks of revulsion through him, but it was another thing entirely to try and take him away from his _soulmate._

He felt his bones snap, a familiar tug at his muscles as his legs broke and shifted slightly as his wendigo reared up and _roared._ It was an assurity, a deafening promise of destruction that rattled through him like a battle cry.

_Not yet! Not now, there are too few people here._

He felt the quiet more than he heard it, the lack of an answer enough in its silence for him to understand the reply. He breathed out a soothing breath, wincing as his bones cracked back into place. He was furious-hell, he was on the brink of destroying everything in sight with a magical outburst that would no doubt send the dungeons crashing into the bed of the black lake, drowning the three people currently inside. He didn't though, focusing instead on his breathing as he attempted to keep his head. It was foolish to try and murder someone when there were so few people around to be witnesses, he needed to collect himself and begin to think it through.

“Unless they can't tell if she was murdered or mauled…”

No, he had to be smart-he had to _plan._ Harry was far from a fool, and found great insult in his own anger-addled thoughts, this was no way to go about killing someone, and it was idiotic to think he really could, especially when he didn’t even know her schedule-or when she would be alone. 

“Focus Potter, begin a file and start planning, you were going to kill her anyway, why not speed up the process.”

Yes, this could work in more favors than just his own, and it wasn’t as if Sirius could be blamed for the death if he was already considered dead, so that was hardly a worry. He would study her, pretend to at least tolerate her for the time being, and then strike when it was most beneficial to do so, likely when everyone who was smart enough to figure him out were focused on other pursuits. _How hard can it be to murder someone in cold blood? I’ve already done it once before, and I was an idiotic first year then._ Yes, he would have to plan some more, but he had been doing that since before he could walk, planning was how his life was structured, and destruction could be found well enough in the structure he created.

* * *

Yule break had flown by for Blaise, a tense christmas and a wretched new years breeding a speedy but harrowing break from school. After a particularly nasty argument with his mother, he had suddenly found himself aboard The Hogwarts Express, shooting off to the school with a velocity that made him stressed. They were going so fast, and while he was sure that they wouldn’t get to Hogwarts until several hours later, he still worried that he was running out of time-worried that things wouldn't be said and done till they arrived in Hogsmeade.

Truly though, the Express was the exact same as it always was, but Blaise could feel a change in atmosphere as he stood out in the open air, waiting on the pullman observation car at the back of the train. Daphne had been insistent that the car was a new addition put in just that summer, and therefore had yet to completely settle into the train’s enchantments and wards. If he got the job done out there, and simply threw the body off the back, there would be no way to trace it back to him.

That is, if his friends managed to keep his alibi sound.

Blaise took a deep breath, he had a little less than a month till February first, and he was feeling the full effects of waiting so long. There was a constant wriggling in his stomach, as if snakes were writhing around inside of his organs. Sharp pains he likened to snake bites stung at his lungs and heart, creating a constant burn as he breathed or ran. He felt agonized on most days, and near the brink of death on others. 

“Hannah?”

He stiffened, a cheap invisibility cloak he stole from his mother’s closet before leaving slung over his shoulders and head moving with him. He didn't think that the letter would actually work, but Daphne had been insistent that Parkinson was positive that Flitch-Fletchy had a crush on Hannah Abbott, so a love letter was sent off in the hopes that it would lure the boy out to the secluded spot, allowing Blaise to do the deed without the worry of prying eyes.

Justin Flitch-Fletchy shut the door behind himself, a precast charm Daphne had cast on the door a half hour prior springing into being, locking the door and fogging all the windows so that no one could look out and see anything but vague shapes. He held the ritual dagger tightly in his hand, knuckles white and breathing uneven. 

_In my body I coexist with infinity._

He didn't need to say the chant out loud, Loki heard it regardless.

_In my mind I am enveloped by impossibility._

Justin stepped up to the ledge, his hands resting on the cool metal as he looked out to the passing pastures.

_In my soul I harbor eternity._

His steps felt softer than air, as if walking along an invisible cloud. The sound of hissing and snapping and bubbling and _gods,_ that _laugh_ surrounded him. It was a comfort and a stimulant and monstrously twisted all at the same time, and the brush of steady fingers against his slowly raising arm felt like an assurance more than a threat.

_In myself, I am devout._

Noises threatened to bring him to the brink of insanity, Blaise’s jaw clenched, pushing back against the excitement and twisted enjoyment that he knew was not his own. He carried out this duty out of loyalty, but his tricks were never to be made at the expense of another's life, Daphne had assured him of that.

_“The act of doing something for another is not the act of doing it for yourself.” Daphne met him at the train station early, her long blonde hair floating along in the wind. “Your actions are not reflective of who you are unless you allow them to be, so don’t!”_

A voice, a whisper and a shout and a hair-raising cackle rolled up into one brushed against his ear, the ghost of a grin over his shoulder.

**“Now.”**

He swung his arm down, the sound of skin slicing apart getting drowned out by the boy’s choked gurgle, the knife striking strong and true through the side of his neck.

Blaise felt it immediately, the familiar magic reaching out to grasp a hold of the muggleborn’s core, pulling it right from his body as he slowly lost energy and blood. Blaise ignored the fuzzy feeling as he yanked the dagger out with a _squelch,_ before cutting downwards once more, as if slicing wheat in a field. The incision went in further, he reached up, grasping the boys hair and pulling his head back _hard._ He grunted, hearing a resounding _snap_ as the boy’s spinal cord severed with the yank backwards.

Not even thinking, Blaise grabbed the boy’s pant leg and pulled up, watching as his body fell over onto the tracks below, tumbling along before settling onto his back, the blood seeping from his neck unseeable except for a pinprick of red on a sea of gray. The body got smaller and smaller as the train threw itself along at a fast pace, his death going unnoticed and body yet to be found. It was doubtful they would find him until the train returned to the station the next morning, and Blaise hoped the train driver wasn’t able to stop in time before running the corpse over-it would sabotage any attempt to figure out how he died if the train lacerated the body enough.

He stumbled back, a symphony of strange feeling and magic swirling about him as Loki seemed to almost _play_ with the dead boy’s stolen magic.

_Dead. He’s dead._

_Stolen magic?_

His brain was fuzzy, the pleasurable buzz of new magic racing through his body and making the tips of his fingers tingle. Stumbling into the outer wall of the train car, Blaise managed to keep his head enough to keep his hold on the borrowed dagger as he fell onto the metal flooring underfoot, the invisibility cloak somehow managing to still cover him completely as he slumped against the wall. He didn't even notice, his blood pumping a mantra through his ears as his body was overtaken by a buzz that blocked out all other feelings. He was hot, sweating through his clothes despite the icy winter chill around him, the feeling of his core heating to the point of bursting making him groan softly in some semblance of pain.

His mouth went dry, spots and shadows dancing across his vision. He caught sights of flowing blonde hair and unnaturally green eyes. _Is that Harry?_ He couldn’t be sure, nothing looked quite right, but there was someone there, calling out to someone maybe? Were they there for him? Did they figure it out so quickly?

His heartbeat picked up, and in his delirious state Blaise felt the need to shout out, but something held him back, and he instead curled closer in on himself, the bloodied dagger in his hand grounding him to some semblance of sanity. 

Feet and hands splashed across his vision, pretty lights and strange flashes darted about and made his jumbled thoughts even worse-more displaced and confused than ever. But something held him still on that cold metal floor, and he could do nothing but sweat as the new magic sank into his skin. Eyes blown wide and body shaking as he curled up tighter under the safety of invisibility, cotton pushing out of his ears as strange lights and familiar people crossed his vision.

Back in Hogwarts, a tall boy jerked up from where he sat at an old desk, tinkering away deep underground. Looking skyward, Harry searched for the feeling that had disturbed his concentration with narrowed eyes. There was something strange going on, a shift in familiar magic that he could just barely place.

“Death.”

“Hm?”

“Has Blaise done something?”

The god picked up the nearest vial of golden liquid, observing it with mild interest. “Now what could ever bring you to that conclusion?”

Harry narrowed his eyes further, “I feel something different, and I can't explain how so it must be your fault. Now spill.”

“Hmmm… it seems your connection to death is growing, I hadn’t expected you to be able to feel your friend commit a murder so early in your life. Interesting.”

The tall boy rose, gathering up scattered pieces of parchment as the god leaned back against the ancient walls. “So that’s what those two were planning... I should have asked to help out.”

“You would’ve taken the fun out of it.”

“Oh tosh…” he sighed, pretending to not be bothered by being left out of the murder plot. “I’ve got the annihilation of my past regrets to plan as it is, I probably would have gotten in the way.”

“That’s an odd thing to call Ginevra Weasley.”

Harry froze, impossibly green eyes glowing with anger. “But fitting, as I'm sure you know.”

“She can't be a past regret if she is a present displeasure.”

“Leave the philosophy to someone who cares.”

Death shrugged, watching as his master stormed off, no doubt wishing to continue planning in his dorm, away from the cold walls of a forgotten library. It was interesting how things had played out, the other two had already changed things for the better as Harry was left to grow far worse than Fate had ever planned for him. Death worried that the magical separation from his soulmate’s soul was doing far more harm than he initially expected, and had taken a few liberties in pushing Draco in the right direction. Sure, swapping out Harry’s original christmas present with that book was a tad obvious, but it seemed that he needed to be as blunt as physically possible with the boy to get anything across.

Golden green eyes faded from sight as Harry crawled out of the chamber, his heart heavy with anger and mind occupied with plans upon contingency plans, the stress of the world on his shoulders as he fell deeper into a desire for revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter holds two of my favorite sentences I've ever written, both spoken by Drarry. I will immortalize them below:  
> Draco, in regards to his emotional state: “If I am not troubled, then Helen of Troy was not beautiful.”  
> Harry, in regards to an attempted drugging on his person: “That psycho bitch roofied my fudge with amortentia…”  
> I feel that these are both accurate depictions of their personalities.
> 
> Also, I realize that this chapter takes considerable knowledge of the legend of Helen of Troy to understand some of the references, and a lot of you likely have better things to do with your brain cells than I do, so I'll write out a brief summary below for anyone interested:
> 
> Helen was the most beautiful woman on the planet, and married to King Menelaus. Aphrodite promises her to this guy named Paris after what was called Judgement of Paris, which is a whole other can of worms so I won't even get into it. Paris takes her on off to Troy and war happens. Menelaus sends the considerably underpaid Achaeans out to reclaim her in the Odyssey (we all had high school english, I'm sure you know how that went). So those poor bastards go running all over the place trying to find her cuz that's Menelaus' beau and Paris is a little bitch boy anyway so fuck that guy (or is he? this is kind of a Persephone/Hades story y'all, the ambiguity of Helen and Paris' relationship is kinda legendary in itself). Some more war happens and by then Helen gets with Paris' much hotter brother Hector, who despite the unfortunate name is a total hot jock and worth much more of her time. After Paris and Hector both croak in the insanely popular but very brutal Sacking of Troy, she gets with the third brother and honestly at this point I doubt anyone is still reading so I'll just stop here :P


	62. The Master of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Hogwarts Express returns to the school, students scramble to reunite with their friends and lovers.

Blaise woke in a cold sweat, his body tangled up uncomfortably in the fabric of his mother’s invisibility cloak. Wriggling pathetically for a moment, he attempted to clear the cotton out of his ears as bright lights flew across his vision, confusion muddling any thoughts that may have leaked through. Taking a gulp of air, his head thunked against the cool metal under him, his eyes screwed up and breathing starting to steady. His mind began to slowly clear, and his ears finally started registering Daphne’s worried voice calling his name.

“Blaise? Bloody hell where are you-”

“Hmfh… ‘ver here” He kicked a leg out of the cloak, watching as Daphne ran over and yanked it off of him, pulling him up into a seating position as she did so. Blaise noticed that his hand still clutched the curved dagger tightly, his knuckles white and muscles tense around the handle. He held the blood-encrusted blade to the light, trying to make sense of it as his thoughts still tried to jumble together into some modicum of sense, his sight still somewhat blurred. Daphne sighed tiredly, prying his hands away from the thing and pulling him into a tight hug.

“Why are you sleeping out here? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She whispered quietly in his ear, her warm breath brushing against his chilled skin as he settled his head into her shoulder. All of his muscles relaxed, the feeling of her hand rubbing his neck comfortingly making him nearly sag in relief.

“I don't know, something strange happened to my magic. I think… I think I may have blacked out-I’m sorry for worrying you.”

She banished the dagger, cleaning any blood from his hands and shirt as she did so. “It's alright Blaise, don't worry yourself about inconsequential things.” She looked into his eyes, gaze soft and almost pleading as she searched for something within them. “We have an hour or so till we get to Hogsmeade, get back under the cloak and follow after me.” She didn't seem to find what she was looking for, and pulled him to his feet wordlessly.

He was still somewhat tired and  _ very _ out of it as she led his invisible form back to the compartment, their friends only looking somewhat confused when he revealed himself from underneath. As it was, no one in the compartment could get shocked very easily anymore, and didn’t seem all that curious about where he had gone. It was rather hard to be surprised about small things like that if you were in a constant vicinity of Harry Potter after all, it seemed they were all immune to strange things now.

However, one of them was almost  _ infamously _ nosey, and Draco raised an eyebrow at them from where he was perched on the luggage rack. The lucky bastard was still small enough to fit in the weirdest places. “And what were you two doing with that thing?”

Blaise practically collapsed onto the nearest bench, leaning back and letting out a tired sigh. His bones ached uncomfortably, but there was a bubbly warmth that raced through his stomach, as if someone was impishly tickling up his side. Blaise felt lighter than ever before, his fingers lightly flexing around nothing in particular as he relaxed back into the plush seats.

“Stuff.”

Theo snorted from where he lounged across one of the seats, his body leaning haphazardly off it and appearing on the cusp of falling off, the window’s ledge the only thing helping him to keep balance. He flipped a page in whatever it was he was reading, smirking as if a joke had been said. “Oh sure, ‘stuff’. I suppose that's why Daphne joined you for said ‘stuff’? Or why it took her so long to come back after leaving to help with the ‘stuff’? Or maybe-”

“Alright alright we get it Nott, they snogged. How scandalous.” Draco stretched out languorously, his toes barely brushing against one side of the overhead as he pressed his hands against the other wall. Blaise blushed angrily, not wanting to argue against the… rather solid alibi, but also wanting to defend himself against the obvious teasing. Daphne had no such qualms however, and ripped off her shoe and threw it at Draco, the outsole preceding to slap him right in the face.

“Oh that's it-”

“You deserve what you get, Malfoy. Do you have any idea how long it took my mum to get all that glitter out of our throw pillows?”

“Well it serves you right, sending me that wasp’s nest last year!”

Blaise groaned, thumping his head against the wall as a spectacular fight ensued. He really wished Harry was in the compartment, the taller boy would no doubt have something interesting to say about the fighting; it was just boring now without Harry's amused quips ever so often. Glancing over to the precariously balanced Theo, Blaise realized that someone in the cabin was suspiciously absent.

“Oi, mate, where’s your girlfriend?”

“Who?”

“Tracey.”

“Oh… she isn’t my girlfriend.”

“Sure. Answer the question.”

Theo shrugged lamely. “Hell if I know.”

There was a crash, and Blaise dodged a flying purse as it ricocheted off the wall behind him and to the floor. His eyes were still trained suspiciously onto Theo, squinting as if attempting to gleam any differences between his usual appearance and how he was now. There was definitely something off about him, Theo looked sickly, and kept squinting at his book-as if the light hurt his eyes.

“You alright mate?”

Theo blinked a few times, as if trying to process his words. “Wot? Oh-yea I'm fine, just have a headache.” He smiled assuredly, if a little pained, and attempted to return to his book. Key word being attempted. There was a yell as Daphne crashed into the seat next to him, scrambling up immediately and full body tackling Draco to the floor. Blaise blinked the spots from his vision, wishing his eyes would stop acting up.

“Have you been drinking enough water? I heard that can make you have a headache.”

The Nott heir’s smile sharpened a little, his shoulders curving in on him as he waved his wand to cast a silencing charm on the compartment, ensuring that no noise would escape the small room. Just as he did so, Draco screamed with fury, flames flickering across his skin as he hurled a ball of fire at Daphne, who smoothly dodged. Blaise threw up a shield around them, ignoring the fight as Theo rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I think it's just stress. Don't worry yourself.”

Blaise instead decided to keep pushing, releasing his shield as a splash of water glanced off of it. “What kind of stress?”

Theo’s eye twitched. “You really aren't helping much mate.”

Someone’s expensive-looking dragon leather boot flew at them, just barely missing Theo as it smacked against the wall between them. Daphne let out a shout of frustration and lunged at Draco, who dodged the other direction.

Blaise threw his hands up in mock-surrender, leaning a bit to the left as a spell smacked against where his head just vacated. “Fine fine, so sorry for being concerned about your well being.”

Theo glared a little, before returning to his book, casting a lazy shield as a small ball of fire flew towards him and smacked harmlessly against it. 

Truthfully, Blaise was feeling extremely odd, as if his entire existence had been altered slightly. He felt like he was coming down from a high, some sort of unnatural warmth settling low in his stomach as he did. His magic had fully merged with Flitch-Fletchy’s, becoming something just a few shades different-just a few shades off, and he felt that he had been irrevocably altered along with it. Perhaps something besides his magic had also changed. Closing his eyes, Blaise tried to reach out to Loki, hearing nothing but a satisfied hiss from over his shoulder, echoing his own feelings of cautious contentment.

He groaned one final time, opening his eyes to watch as the two fighting blonds finally started to cool off, quite literally in Draco’s case. The boy had been splashed with a liberal amount of water, and steam rolled off of his skin as he huffed angrily. Daphne had been cursed purple, and stood imposingly over the slightly shorter boy, holding herself with elegance despite her absurd appearance. Blaise smiled, she never failed to look stunningly terrifying in every situation.

Waving his wand aggressively, Draco dried himself off completely, glaring at the girl as he returned to his perch in the now quite empty overhead. Daphne whipped around and raised her eyebrow at Blaise expectantly, who proceeded to return her skin to it’s normal peachy color with a flick of his wand. She huffed in a way he was sure was supposed to be poshly, but in her frazzled state appeared more grumpy than anything. Slumping down next to him, she propped her head up on his shoulder, mumbling something about stupid human sacrifices and stupider Malfoy heirs. He chucked, resting his own head on hers as she pulled her legs up and rested fully against him, the compartment returning to silence as its occupants settled down. A hand brushed over his eyes, the hissed command to go to rest breezing past his face. He followed it gladly, closing his eyes and allowing sleep to take him once more.

* * *

The first thing Draco saw upon stepping off of the Hogwarts Express was an angel, standing tall and proud as the sun shone down on him, the rays like a beacon of light showing off God's greatest creation. The glimmer of spikes which decorated the shoulders of a studded leather jacket struck his eyes and made Draco squint slightly, the tall boy waving as he grinned dangerously from his spot at the treeline. The ever-bright green eyes caught his own and widened in excitement, long fingers playing with a jeweled ring which sat firmly on his right pointer finger. The smell of smoke brushed across Draco’s nose, brimstone and sulfur and warm decay combining together to form the tantalizingly attractive but lethally dangerous aroma that encapsulated who the tall boy was in his entirety. Draco took a shuddering breath as those impossibly green eyes held his gaze, and the unearthly creature winked roguishly at him.

Ah, his mistake, it was just a demon with a pretty face.

Hurling himself through the snow, Draco stumbled over himself in his effort to get to Harry, sprinting past other students as Theo halfheartedly called after him. Harry met him halfway, his arms outstretched as Draco lept for the familiar comfort they provided. Strong and steady hands settled on his hidden wings gently, and Draco nearly collapsed in relief, clutching desperately to the taller teen’s shirt as he was finally,  _ finally _ home.

“Hullo.”

“Mhm...”

He didn’t grace the bastard with a reply, feeling vindictive about the last two weeks and his displaced anger over being forced away from Harry. Pressing his cheek further into the boy’s chest, he relaxed in the tall teen’s hold as the familiar heartbeat thumped out an unknowable rhythm. Harry’s chest rose and fell methodically, and Draco once again thought of how unnatural it felt, as if it was just a half-assed imitation of breathing-as if only lazily pretending to be real. Did he even need air?

“Evenin’ Harry.”

“Theo hey… you look like shite.”

Draco glanced over his shoulder, realizing for the first time that his friend looked utterly exhausted, his eyes sagging and skin sickly. He squinted, contemplating Theo's odd state before mentally shrugging and returning to Harry’s delightfully chilly embrace, unbothered by whatever seemed to be his issue.

“Didja miss me Dray?”

He craned his head up, locking eyes with the devil himself… and stuck out his tongue. “Not in the slightest, I'll have you know.”

Harry merely raised an eyebrow, appearing unconvinced. “Really? I had assumed by your letters that you spent the entire break lamenting about your incredibly unfair life using some modicum of mythology references.”

_ Blast it, he has me figured out. _

Draco scoffed, cautiously pulling out of the hug to cross his arms indignantly. “Oh please, you must be projecting your own intense loneliness onto me, I've never heard something so ridiculous in my life!”

“Oh really?” The drawl sent an electric shock down his spine, Draco focused very hard on Harry’s earring and determinately not his stupid, smug, beautiful face. “Why is it, then, that I’ve received several letters from you, all saying in progressively more aggressive ways that I am a fool for rejecting your offer to hole up in Malfoy Manor with you and your parents?”

“I was simply having fun for the hell of it, I was awfully bored you know.”

Just as Harry was about to reply, Blaise stumbled into him and nearly sent them both tumbling to the cold snow underfoot, cursing all the while. As it was, Harry ended up grabbing a hold of his shoulders and keeping them both steady, righting Blaise into a standing position as he did. Draco didn't know if he should be indignant or impressed, so he settled for appearing somewhat constipated instead, opening his mouth to say something sassy or rude.

The look in Harry’s eyes made him pause though, and he squinted at his best friend with undisguised curiosity. There was something almost… calculating behind Harry’s eyes as he observed Blaise, his pupils mere pinpricks as he helped the dazed teen to his feet. Draco found an uncanny resemblance between the look and various others that he had observed before, all of which had been pointed to one of Harry’s various experiments. It was the gaze of a bored genus that had just found a new and exciting thing to study, and Draco felt unnerved with the possibility of Blaise being fascinating enough to warrant Harry's intrigue. Was there something different about the boy that no one but Harry had picked up on? 

“You alright there mate?”

Draco pulled himself back from his thoughts as Blaise blinked in slight confusion. “Yeah sorry, I think I'm coming down with something.”

“Are you sure? You look a tad uhh…” Harry made a weird motion with his hand. “-well you seem a tad sloshed mate. Have you been smoking? Eaten something you shouldn't have recently?”

Blaise blinked a few times before waving him off, stumbling back over to Greengrass, who appeared to have taken the role of fussy mother for the time being as she checked him over for any signs of intoxication.

“You really think he’s smashed? There might be something going ‘round you know, since Theo’s also gone through the ringer.”

Harry made a face, throwing an arm around Draco’s shoulder and pulling him along with the rest of the group. “Nah, I can usually tell the difference between when someone’s sick or when they've gotten tweaked out on something. Blaise seems high on hallucinogens if I’d have to wager, but that’s mostly a guess.”

Draco didn’t really want to question how Harry knew something like that, deciding that he probably just got bored one lazy summer week and researched it obsessively till something else came up. Making an ‘hmm’ noise, he left the conversation where it lied, observing the crowd with mild interest. Looking farther ahead though, Draco nearly jumped in surprise as he made eye contact with the youngest Weasley, who glaried hatefully at him from where she stood at the treeline, Draco raising an eyebrow in response. Sure, he had antagonized the chit’s idiot brother on more than one occasion, but that was hardly grounds for incensed glares. She seemed to huff, her eyes moving away from him and eyeing Harry with interest.

_ Oh. _

_...Ohhhhh. _

_ Yeah. Not happening, you red-headed, indigent, slag. _

Wrinkling his nose with disgust, he pointedly grabbed a hold of Harry’s arm still slung causally over his shoulder, pulling the boy’s arm closer as he raised both eyebrows in mock question at the girl, Harry subconsciously leaning closer in response to the tug, obviously not paying much attention. She glowered, spinning on her heel and storming back to the castle.

_ Mhm, that's what I thought. _

* * *

Harry sighed satisfactorily, keeping a careful eye on Blaise as the boy stumbled ahead of them, Daphne watching with concerned eyes. He had felt the exact moment Blaise had killed the currently unknown person on the train, and Harry was not only extremely curious about how he had gone about it, but incredibly insulted that not only had Harry been left out of the plot, but  _ Daphne  _ of all people had been brought in on it. He had nothing against Daphne mind you, it was just that she hardly seemed the type to go about a murder effectively.

_ Oh who am I kidding, I’ve only killed one person in this life and it didn’t even stick. _

He felt a tug at his sleeve, and subconsciously shifted closer to the warm boy under his arm, his entire left side becoming encompassed in the heat. It was a wonder how Draco managed to trudge through the snow without melting it all into a puddle, as his body temperature always seemed to be near unbearably hot. Glancing around at the other students as the disjointed stream of people coming off of the Express began to thin, he caught sight of a familiar ginger head moving quickly back to the castle. His brow furrowed, what had Weasley been doing out at Hogsmeade? All of her brothers had stayed at the castle, she had no reason to be down there.

_ Unless… _

His eyes narrowed further, the contemplative gaze turning spiteful. It seemed that she had felt it prudent to stalk him from a distance, what a pity. Pulling Draco closer, Harry gazed up at the quickly approaching castle with something akin to annoyance. He would feel considerably stifled if the Weasley chit kept trying to be a bother.

“Hey Harry?”

Glancing to his right, he met eyes with Theo, who still looked awfully sickly. “Do you mind having a chat with me for a moment?” He glanced at Draco, “in private?”

Harry nodded, cautiously peeling away from an annoyed Draco, who was making a considerable effort to not make a fuss about it while obviously wanting to. Branching off from the clump of students they had been in, Harry slouched down slightly to get level with Theo, who seemed jittery at best and near manic at worst.

“What’s this all about mate?”

“I-” he rubbed his neck, eyes somewhat glazed over as he stared off in the middle distance, “I think I'm going to have a vision soon.”

Harry cursed quietly under his breath, already running through the symptoms of a nearing vision with rising agitation. He was getting incredibly annoyed with Fate and all the nonsense she was getting up to, he did have a life to live in spite of her after all. From what he could tell, Theo hadn’t had any sort of seer-like episodes since the summer, and the streak had been doing wonders for the boy’s emotional stability, as well as his own.

“Alright-ah, shite… okay, is there anything I can do to help? Any sort of...” he gestured vaguely,  _ “-something _ that I can do?”

Theo groaned, “bloody hell, why do you think I would bother telling you if I didn't think you could help?”

“Oi! I'm a scientist, not a scholar. That’s  _ your  _ job.”

“Oh sure, this coming from the sorry bastard who spent an entire week obsessing over jellyfish of all things just because they don't have brains.”

“Yeah? Well maybe I was attempting to figure out how  _ you _ work, the brainless tosser that you are.”

The shorter boy winced, rubbing his head in soothing half-circles. “Honestly? I wish I was brainless at this point, it would be a considerable improvement.”

Harry’s irritation dissipated, and he rubbed his friend’s back comfortingly as he led him back to the group, who had lagged behind to wait on them. “Come on then, I'm sure you can take a kip before dinner.”

* * *

_ The wind tousled his hair, a cold chill rushing through him as the distinct sound of a train racing across tracks to an unknown location filled his ears. He opened his eyes, watching as Blaise crept forward under a silky cloak. Theo took in a breath, and watched as his friend’s arm swung down in an arc towards a boy’s neck, the familiar squelch of something sharp severing skin making him wince. The dagger was removed, before slicing through the air once more, sharp blade gleaming in the sun dangerously as it returned to the boy’s neck. Theo closed his eyes, the scene macabre and sorrowful, as if the grim reaper itself had possessed Blaise in order to carry out it’s work. The gurgling of someone attempting to yell out as blood filled their mouth and lungs reminded him of his second year, in which this scene played out very differently. He breathed in the winter wind, watching the countryside fly past as blood splattered against oxidized metal. _

_ “He has support now, someone to lean on… how cute.” _

_ He stiffened at the voice, recognizing the cruel woman’s amused taunting for what it was. Blaise stumbled back as a boy’s corpse fell over the banister, tumbling along across the tracks as Blaise stumbled into a wall, breathing heavily as strange magic swirled around him. His eyes appearing clouded and confused, not at all like the twisted amusement that Theo had once observed from his vantage point curled up in a dark corner, watching as Blaise happily and viciously stabbed someone in the back. It was fascinating, the teen was fighting back against his god-at least somewhat-showing that he still wanted to hold some semblance of himself in the process of carrying out Loki’s word. _

_ “I'm sure you're proud of him, the difference between the possible and what had happened is the most telling with him.” _

_ Theo understood now, the dream he had in second year was a mere possibility of what the future could hold, his friends’ actions defined what would really happen. Did that mean that things had changed for the others too? _

_ “Are you ready to see what came of our little angel?” _

_ The world swirled, and suddenly his vision was swarmed with red. Theo whirled around, hearing the distant sound of Harry grunting in pain. It was hard to tell though, the sound of wood crackling and fire roaring nearly overwhelming the quiet noise. Looking down, Theo watched as the boy threw a large beam off his shoulder, sprinting across a small path cleared through the flames that surrounded them, tripping over himself and lunging out of the way of a falling beam. Still sprinting, Harry grabbed Draco around the arm and yanked him through the smouldering exit. _

_ “I wonder what would have become of Hogwarts if the angel managed to burn that astronomy tower to the dirt. Or perhaps what would have happened to his... reputation?” _

_ Theo ignored her, following the two as he watched Harry throw his soulmate into the snow. He remembered his vision from second year, of course, he could remember the feeling of fire licking harmlessly at his heels as the veela burned it all down. Would Draco’s inheritance have come to light if that had happened? He looked out at the expanse of white as Harry panted tiredly, looking down at the sleeping blond with tired adoration.  _

_ This day could have marked Draco’s destruction, but instead it was Harry who had been thrown to the wind.  _

_ Theo observed the horrifying burn that marred his friend's shoulder with wide eyes, his collarbone visible through the charred flesh. Harry looked... unbelievably tired, peering down at Draco with exasperation-as if this was a daily occurrence. Theo realized then, that Harry was still human, and he had done all of that without batting an eye. He clenched his jaw, remembering how he had scolded the boy for his bravery, considering it foolhardy and idiotic. Had they truly allowed Harry to so obviously sacrifice himself on the daily for nothing more than annoyed reprimands? Were they all gripping his hand, expecting their leader to continue on without acknowledging the child underneath? Had Harry ever been allowed to be just a boy? He took a shuddering breath, this was not the catalyst, but it was a hairline fracture in an already decimated mirror. _

_ “Poor Harry Potter, he never gets exactly what he wants, does he?” _

_ The open space shifted and bent, instantly transforming into a darkened hallway, the sound of a girl’s quiet breathing taking up the silence. It was Hogwarts, not a dorm like it had been once, but the stifling atmosphere was the exact same. He turned, watching the girl get coaxed down from the safety of her dorm and into the darkened halls. _

_ “At least he’ll have thought it through this time. I had worried about his bluntness before.” _

_ A quiet whisper pulled the girl along, a gentle serenade akin to a siren’s song leading her through the empty corridors, and the young child followed it dutifully, as if in a trance. He watched the red hair swish along as she turned into the great hall, following the tantalizing whisper to her doom. _

_ He felt no fear over this scenario, he was separate from it. Theo realized then, that he wasn’t connected to these events anymore, they were more solidified-more real than he remembered his first dream being. They didn't have that edge of potential unreality to them, they were all proven to be true and over with already. _

_ Except for this one. _

_ This one had yet to play out. _

_ But it would. _

_ “It's such a shame really.” _

_ He heard a short shriek, the quiet whisper turning into a menacing howl. The girl’s sudden scream was cut off quickly by gurgling, and Theo winced minutely, closing his eyes and simply listening to the tearing of flesh. He didn't bother peering into the hall, already knowing what he would find. He didn't need to watch it a second time. _

_ “I actually had hoped Harry would change, just a little, for the fun of it.” _

_ Small hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him down to a lower level as the cold green eyes lit up in the darkness. He took a deep breath in, and watched those eyes turn suddenly from the twisted destruction to an impossibly vibrant gold-green, the hands on his shoulders growing larger as the person in front of him rose to monstrous heights. This was a completely different creature-a different being, completely foreign to Theo and out of his realm of influence, and the deep, soothing voice that spoke next proved his thoughts right. _

_ “But sadly, death never changes, and my master is much the same.” _

_ He felt comforted, the person-no, the experience in front of him so unlike the last that it was completely foreign. A large hand brushed gently against his brow, an apology for past regrets ghosting across his face. He could feel his mother then, this creature before him knew her in her entirety, he was sure of it. He breathed in, this was the End rolled up into some shambling excuse of a god. This was infinity given form. This was the end of life, and the creation of destruction. This, was Death. _

_ “You can't save them all, brave warrior that you are, you must let this happen.” _

_ “I don't want to.” _

_ It was a quiet admission, just barely audible over the morbid sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bones that wafted through the empty corridor, creeping along with the tangy smell of iron. If that was truly Harry, if that monstrous thing was truly his friend, then Theo had truly failed him. The creature was indistinguishable from pure greed, so unlike the lazy perfection that was Heir Potter. Had Theo truly let him fall so far from what he could have been that this was all that was left? _

_ “This was always his fate, you can't change how he craves destruction, and you shouldn’t force him to suffer by trying.” _

_ A tear slid down his cheek, the hand brushed it away.  _

_ “I know. I understand how it hurts you to allow this, but he will be better for it. Let him finally merge with the monster inside of him-allow it to encompass him, and it will pass over you with nothing more than a whisper.” _

_ There was no pain this time, no lessons to be learned from mind-numbing agony, just the quiet sounds of eating as Harry fell into oblivion. He could only listen to Harry crash, the realization that his friend was reaching a catalyst beyond Theo’s own comprehension boring down on him as if the earth tipped off of Atlas’ shoulders. He could only stand there and let the universe take his friend. Let it take the boy who had already given so much to them, had already saved and killed and destroyed for them. _

_ How much was too much? _

_ It seemed they had crossed that line for Harry already, and there was no going back from it. _

_ “Will he live through this? Please, please tell me that much.” _

_ The End didn’t speak for a moment, as if it was contemplating what to say. _

_ “As it stands, I'm afraid the real Harry Potter has yet to truly exist. This all must happen before he is ever capable of living… Survival is all he knows at present.” _

_ Theo felt that it was partially his fault. This should have been obvious from the start, how could he have been such a fool to not realize the full extent of his friend’s suffering? _

_ “We see what we want to, not what is the truth. Ignorance is human nature. You never had a chance of saving him from this, it was already decided on in a lifetime that has been long since destroyed.” _

_ The truth of the words stung, the quiet admission whispered from the mouth of eternity stabbing into his soul and festering, bloody and red with anger. This was not what he needed to know, he couldn’t look Harry in the eye once this was said and done. How was he supposed to go on knowing that the thing in there was Harry Potter when he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it? _

_ “All I have left to say Theodore, is to be cautious, and to be kind...” _

**_“Because sometimes, all we can do is watch.”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: *chuckles* I'm in danger
> 
> I think this is the first time I've not posted for two days in a row, feels a little weird, but I've been working on my other project some and school exists, also the fact that this chapter was *stressful* cuz its so chock full of foreshadowing and double meanings that I needed a while to even figure out how I was going to word some things while still making it interesting 😬
> 
> P.S. A lovely reader named Dr. Z is making a really cool fic based on the last chapter, I highly recommend anyone curious to go check it out. It should be linked up below ;P


	63. Sutured Lips Sink Ships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The biggest burden a seer must bear is the necessity to keep their fat mouth shut.

**Previously:** **  
**_The truth of the words stung, the quiet admission whispered from the mouth of eternity stabbing into his soul and festering, bloody and red with anger. This was not what he needed to know, he couldn’t look Harry in the eye once this was said and done. How was he supposed to go on knowing that the thing in there was Harry Potter and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it?_

_“All I have left to say Theodore, is to be cautious, and to be kind...”_

**_“Because sometimes, all we can do is watch.”_ **

* * *

Theo woke with a start, his breathing choppy and uneven as cold sweat dripped from his brow. The dorm room was dark, impossibly so, with the only light coming in from the crack under the door, and the only noise being his own short breaths. His chest heaved, wide eyes darted around the room. He looked desperately for the soothing golden-green eyes or, merlin be damned, the cold twisted ones. Theo tried reaching back out, tried begging for more explanation, but no one answered. The room was quiet, and still.

He would gain no more explanation from his tormentors.

He breathed in fast through his nose, tears quickly escaping his eyes as he rubbed at his face, skin around his eyes sensitive and puffy. This wasn’t supposed to happen, visions or dreams were never supposed to be this obvious-never this concrete. The finality of it made his already fragile control crumble to his feet in a heap, the utter helplessness weighing on him like gravity did to Icarus. His left eye throbbed, the artificial gold feeling far too real and far, _far_ too familiar for comfort. It felt as though that creature, that faceless eternity-Death, was watching, gold and green swirling around his peripherals as the God of Gods was sighing in disappointment. He screwed his eyelids shut, pressing the heels of his hands down into the sockets and making splashes of color and dots appear in his vision. 

**“All we can do is watch.”**

He choked back a sob. “I don't want to watch damn it, I want to _help.”_

But that was not an option allotted to him.

Theo didn't go to dinner that night, and instead wrote a short note to the house elves to deliver him a modest snack-something that could be eaten on an uneasy stomach. He sat in bed, munching on crumbly saltines as the silence and darkness overwhelming him and his thoughts, the truth bearing down on him as he stared out at the nothingness that surrounded him. Theo couldn’t bring himself to light any lamps, he didn't want to be yanked from the darkness into the reality that he was awake, Theo wanted to be able to pretend he still had time. The light would upset the careful balance between dream and reality that he sat in the middle of. 

When Crabb and Goyle finally lumbered in, the soft candlelight from the hallway disrupted his calm and sealed his fate. Theo clutched at his sheets, it was already curfew it seemed.

“Oi, you alright in there Theo?”

Harry’s voice felt like a splash of freezing water against his back, every panic receptor he had springing into action as he curled further in on himself. “Fine.”

He heard something akin to grumbling before the door was closed, his two dorm-mates lighting small candles in which to see their various activities. Theo relaxed minutely, pressing his head into his pillow and attempting to block out all light and sound. He wished to return to the limbo he had been encompassed in only seconds prior, the inky black that promised nothing but nothingness. He took a deep breath of air as Crabb lumbered into bed, the gentle flicker of a candle getting snuffed out as he did. Only one patch of light remained till he could return to assured infinity.

There was nothing that he could do to help Harry, and even if there was it seemed that trying to help would only do more harm. He curled up into a ball, knees hugged to his chest as the sound of quiet movements filled the room, Goyle was getting ready to settle in to sleep as well it seemed.

**“Watch.”**

His left eye burned, almost... _glowing_ in the low light as strange ambient magic clashed dangerously with his own. Whatever the End had truly been, if it had been Death or God or destruction incarnate, its magic was so foreign to him that coming into contact with it was sending spikes of pain racing through his body. It was different from the twisted green eyes, different from the assured pain that followed with them. The End’s magic was utterly wretched and vile, but also pure and absolute. It’s existence in his mind for the few minutes that it held court within him was enough for his own core to react dangerously in response. He felt chilled to the bone, his arms shaking as the waves of confused revulsion crashed through him.

**“Watch and revel in the infinitesimal absolution that will become of him.”**

Theo shuddered, the thoughts running through his head faster than he could comprehend them. The aftershocks like waves in an uncertain sea. He was not all-knowing, and the woman behind the twisted green eyes was uncertain in her story, she changed things at the drop of a hat and with little reason. But the End, but Death… it took everything, and as it brushed a hand gently over his cheek, Theo could feel his ancestors comforting him along with it. The infinite reach of time stretching forwards and back had lightly touched his cheek-had comforted him-and the knowledge of that froze him to his core.

The voice it had spoken with however, was far more horrific than just its existence. Theo could barely comprehend the thing having human form, he could barely fathom it existing at all, but its voice had been so chillingy familiar that he couldn't doubt what it was.

Death had spoken with Harry’s voice, much older and deeper and infinitely infinite in comparison, yes, but the low drawl and quiet, soothing whisper were all the same.

Why did infinity have the voice of Harry Potter?

Why did it speak as if they were not the same creature?

_“But sadly, death never changes, and my master is much the same.”_

He took a shuddering gasp of air, the last candle finally flickering out as Goyle settled into his bed.

Why was Harry Potter being fashioned as the master of eternity?

* * *

Luna skipped through a daze of pretty lights, the glowing outline of every person she passed fluttering along the edges around her vision. Luna had loved looking at magic when she first discovered she housed the talent, and she had often simply sat out in the wilderness and watched as the sharp definition of a fawn melted away into warm hues of subtle magic. She loved it so much that she had forgotten how to stop, and now walked through the daze of brilliant colors and clouds and feelings, unseeing of the solid lines of a physical form. She knew she was no better than a blind woman when seeing things with magic, as when observing them she could only see specific shapes and colors flit across her vision, always unknowing of what their physical form could possibly appear to be. Truthfully, Luna thought that it was a welcome change, seeing the magic instead of the body allowed her to understand people and places and things in a way completely unlike others could. Sure, she had difficulty reading magical books sometimes, as all the library books seemed to be charmed to the gills so heavily that she can't see past the thick tendrils of magic to make out the words, but literature had never been her cup of tea, and watching the magic as it interacted with the environment was much better, in her opinion. Besides, Theo could always just read something to her if need be.

She hummed slightly as she settled down at the Ravenclaw table, reaching out for a soothing white blur she easily identified as scrambled eggs, how there were magical chickens was anyone's guess, she could only assume there was some sort of enchantment cast on them. Harry Potter’s magic was fascinating, and she enjoyed spending hours and hours on end contemplating it. His heart-the core of his being-was a small pinprick of gold and green, as condensed and concentrated as a neutron star. He was on the cusp of collapsing into a black hole, always on the brink but never quite there, and she couldn't wait till he did eventually collapse, the eventuality keeping her on the edge of her seat. Everything in him would change. Branching out from the neutron star that was his core, were thick tendrils of silver-his magic-which splayed out and lashed viciously at anyone he disliked, but wrapped comfortingly around those he loved. His magic appeared much different than his core, revealing a clear divide between who he truly was and who he showed himself to be. Luna hoped that his core could suck up all that silver magic and spit it out golden green, that a gaping black hole would soon form and force him to greater heights. She was excited for the fall now, at first she had been unbelievably warry, but now she couldn’t wait.

Luna then glanced at the Slytherin table, her eyes as wide and unseeingly seeing as always. Draco Malfoy’s magic was completely different from Harry’s, the tightly woven strings of black stitched together in a geometric pattern, all rolled up into a ball of perfect darkness. His core was black as night, and right through the middle of it was a shocking slip of fiery red breaking through the starless sky. His magic branched out from the ball of darkness, and grew dark and cruel and _red_ with heat. His magic was like hot coals, the dark and the fire and the incredible warmth forcing out of his body and into the open air. He was one of the few people who had enough magic for it to constantly weave around their body instead of inside it, and she often had difficulty figuring out his true form instead of the waves of black that he seemed to exist as. His voice was sharp and jaded, but his magic warmed her all the same.

Her gaze wavered, eyes widening further as she moved down the line of familiar shapes and colors to a welcome sight. Blaise Zabini was another oddity that she observed often, though she could not say that she had ever spoken to him before. His magic was not his own in some respects, and on occasion he seemed to be strangling himself in an effort to tamp one part down in lieu of another. On one hand, he was a carefree blue, his magic more so clouds then tendrils, and the happy mists of laughter and sun swirled and dipped in constant motion. On the other however, he was sickly green vines, his magic palatable and near-touchable. Those twisting vines of earthly green never failed to set her on edge, as the dense magic wrapped tightly around the happy blue clouds, tightening and condensing them into ice. She worried about the clouds often, and worried if they would be completely destroyed soon, but today she had found with no small amount of glee that the wisps of blue had lost form, becoming stretched and light-too thin for the vines to properly grasp. She hoped Blaise Zabini was finding an equilibrium in himself that would allow the clouds and vines to coexist in harmony. She wished him the best, and smiled as the blue and green danced in an odd sort of jest.

Her favorite core however, was the one taken residence in Theodore Nott. Ever since she laid eyes on it on the very first day of her very first year, she had been so completely and utterly taken with it that she couldn’t properly look away from it on occasion. His magic was a warm brown-like honey-and dripped through the air in much the same way that the sweet substance did. His core, which settled deep in his stomach, was a firm rock of deep brown, which began to crack and fracture like honeycomb as you moved further away from his center, the molten browns and golds slowly leaking from the rocky center. It was steady, his entire body moving in assured but lazy drips of sweet sugar. She loved watching his magic as it moved slowly through him, like a current of half-molten rock, and often spent hours wasting away just watching his magic swirl and slide in the form of who he was. 

Luna didn’t need to see what people’s physical features were to understand who they were. She hadn’t seen the expression of laughter on someone's face for years, but the pulse of energy or flick of a light tendrel of magic was far more than enough to understand how they felt. So when she observed her boy of honey stumble into the great hall that morning, his magic nearly frozen in place from an invisible chill-as the warm honey had crystallized painfully throughout his body-she knew something was very _very_ wrong. She quickly followed him out of course, after a breakfast of watching and waiting for him to finally leave. It was sunday after all, she would have plenty of time to figure out what was wrong. Twirling out of the great hall, she hopped along behind him as he stiffly walked to the Hogwarts library, the crystallization and fractures cracking and shifting as if a man of stone was attempting to carve himself joints.

“Hello Theo!” she chirped, watching his crystalized magic crack and warm slightly as he turned to her, his relief in seeing her palatable in the air and his reaction obvious. She smiled winningly.

“Oh! Luna, how are you?”

She smiled, skipping faster as to match his stride, “oh I’m lovely. How are you though? You seem awfully solid compared to usual.”

His aura was confused, the light browns churning in minute puzzlement, as if she was a riddle yet to be solved. She was familiar with this particular emotion, as it often overplayed his ambient affection whenever she spoke. Luna often wondered if he was just dense or particularly bad at puzzles, as she seemed to be an improbability he could never seem to figure out. She didn't know if she should be flattered or flabbergasted, and settled to be somewhere in the middle.

“More solid…?”

“Mhm! It is very worrying really, has something happened?”

 _Ah, there it is._ He was crystalizing again, the cracks sealing back up as he was reminded of what was stressing him.

“It’s nothing you should worry about Luna. I’m fine.”

She hummed, extremely unconvinced and already plotting how to warm him up. “I've noticed you get solid whenever worrying about Harry, has he done something stressful lately?”

“You… you aren't talking about physically solid, right?”

She snorted, “no silly! _Magically_ solid, you're usually very in the middle of solid and liquid-not anything like a gas though-you’re very mixed between the two, but right now you’re all solid! It's very disconcerting you know.” Theo’s confusion, which had only been somewhat apparent before, was now very clearly defined, and as his analytical brain jumped into overdrive, his magic started to churn faster in response-breaking up the crystals as it did. 

“I have no clue what you're on about Lu, sorry.”

“Oh it's alright Theo! I understand your confusion completely and appreciate it.” His core pulsed in amusement, the warmth and movement breaking up even more of the pesky crystalized honey and melting it back into normalcy. She smiled at his soft laugh, cheeks warming as he physically relaxed, his magic copying the feelings instantaneously.

“Well that's good, though I would generally prefer to understand what you mean when you say things.”

“But that takes all the fun out of it!” She hooked an arm around his, finding wool where she expected sticky sweet nectar. It was difficult sometimes to remember that people weren't made out of just their soul, Luna made a mental note to touch people more often to remind herself of that fact. Theo breathed out a sigh.

“I suppose you have a point.”

“Of course I do. Now, what is making you so solid, Theo?”

He didn’t reply, but his molten honey heart kept churning and melting and returning her honey boy to his proper brilliance. She considered it something of a considerable improvement. Glancing down the hall, she watched as a clump of people breezed past, their cores airy and gentle as they giggled to each other. Her soul was white as snow, and for years had been just as wispy and gentle as theirs had been, but in the past year it had clumped up into particles of snow-as if dragging her down to the earth with them. Luna liked the change, things felt crisper now.

“I had a bad dream is all.” She turned back to her honey boy, his warm molten brown returning completely, with only a few clumps of crystals floating about. Not perfect, but not everything was.

“A bad dream about Harry?”

“Mhm.”

She thought of Harry’s core, of his near-black hole of a core. She thought of how it would suck up every spare piece of magic in the air and hoard it for itself, how it would make Harry so much stronger but so, _so_ different. 

“Change is good sometimes, if you can adapt to what it brings.”

She had been terrified when she started to make the shift from nearly-invisible wisps of white to gently falling snow, but she had been so much better for it. Luna was sure Blaise Zabini was terrified when his cloud of blue started to loosen and slip from the confines of his green vines, but it would be better for him. Change does not mean the end to the good, and destruction did not mean the end of all things.

“What if you can’t adapt?”

She thought of her father’s core, thought of how it was simply a dimly glowing light of yellow on the backdrop of leaded black. Grief did horrible things to a person-and even worse to their soul.

“I suppose... we’ll have a problem then.”

She loved her father, and she loved her mother’s memory just as much. Luna remembered the death as if it had just happened, of the assured flick of her mother’s wand as she said the damning words. Remembered the explosion and the thunk of Pandora Lovegood’s body as she fell to the cold floor below. Luna hadn’t been able to see souls then-hadn’t even figured out how-and had watched the scene play out with horror splashed across her young face, tears in her eyes and heart in her lungs. Luna was glad that she had been unable to see her mother’s soul wink out of existence, that she hadn’t been able to see the life drift out of her like a wisp of smoke. Her father’s core however, had traveled at a slow enough decline for her to watch as it stagnated each and every day, falling further and further from its once sunny brilliance.

“Very reassuring, thank you Luna.”

She clutched the soft wool of his jumper tightly, leaning slightly into him and attempting to smell the warm honey that _was_ Theodore Nott. 

“Don't worry Theo, he’ll be just fine, I'm sure of it.”

* * *

Harry fell back into the normalcy of Hogwarts with relative grace, returning to classes as if nothing was amiss, and continued to work on various projects on the side as he did so. It was easy enough to ignore Lupin’s looks of longing or Dumbledore’s bothersome twinkle, Ginny Weasley’s unsettling eyes or Theo’s weary gaze. He noted it all down as intriguing, but to be put on hold till a later date, choosing instead to revel in Draco’s warmth or joke about with the noticeably more carefree Blaise, sneak about and make issues with the twins or play terse chess with Daphne. He didn't notice Tracey’s suspicious absence from most gatherings, or if he did, the acknowledgement left his mind far too quickly for him to make any true note of it. What would the girl possibly be up to that would warrant his worry anyhow?

As soon as it arrived, January was swept away in the warming winter winds that he desperately clung to, February creeping through with the first cautious signs of spring. The tragic death of Justin Finch-Fletchley was made public sometime around the end of January, though Harry barely made note of it. His shoulder had healed up nicely, and all that could be seen was the burn on his palm was the loss of any fingerprints on his right hand, which he truly considered a bonus. His shoulder however, still had a rather jaring burn scar, which covered all of his left shoulder, collarbone, and the base of his neck, tearing across his skin as if the very fire that had put it there was screaming across his flesh. Everytime he took off his shirt, Draco went pale and quiet as he observed the burn, obviously blaming himself for the injury. Harry rectified this issue by only undressing in the comfort of the baths, knowing that Draco’s peace of mind far outstriped convinience. Other than the occasional assurance that, ‘yes Theo, I am just fine, thank you for asking’ the weeks passed with nothing more than a whisper of slight notability.

It was February third when the first hiccup of the new year revealed itself, the passing of time making note of itself like a banshee in the dead of night.

“They’re officially recalling the dementors then? I thought Black’s been dead for months now!” Harry halted in place, turning to watch the two hufflepuffs as they continued their loud chatter.

“Yeah, apparently the minister was really cautious about calling them back to Azkaban for some reason, do you think the ministry can even control the freaky things?”

“Hell if I know, I'm just glad they'll be gone.”

Harry narrowed his eyes as the two boys moved out of his range of hearing, turning a corner as he was forced to keep moving by Draco’s incessant tugging at his sleeve. He turned, matching Draco’s shorter stride with only mild difficulty as he contemplated the news, Blaise’s loud voice getting firmly blocked out as he thought. It was good that the dementors were leaving of course, but it represented the ministry's official waving of the white flag in regards to the search of Sirius. Of course they knew the charred body they found in the Shrieking Shack wasn’t actually his, and they likely were well aware that it was indeed Pettigrew’s, but that kind of news would not only rock the very foundation of Great Britain, but could spell doom for Fudge’s campaign. As it was, they had likely come to the correct conclusion that Sirius was innocent, and were quickly trying to save face.

He sighed minutely, even if the minister or, hell-the auror department knew that Sirius was innocent, they were obviously never going to grant him trial, and while Harry was in no need of a proper guardian in this lifetime, it was best for his conscience if Sirius was freed. Further solidifying the idea was his realization that the man was likely the only person from his last life that had truly been on his side. 

_And Dumbledore let him be killed for it._

It was the right thing to do-help Sirius be freed of course-but considerably impossible given Harry’s current status as Heir. Sure, if he could take up the Slytherin lordship-or even the Potter one-it would be a walk in the park to get the man freed, but as he was? A thirteen year old half-blood with deep pockets and considerable fame? Well, he could attempt it, but with everything else going on it would be considerably more difficult than he prefered. Either way, the press coverage of the case alone would make Dumbledore (and many others) descend onto him like a swarm of locust, and Harry had yet to get the old bastard out of his position as Harry’s magical guardian, which currently had him tethered to the headmaster’s every beck and call (not really, but if the man really wanted to make Harry’s life difficult, he very well could).

As it was, he would have a much better time doing as was done in the last life and hide Sirius away someplace. Though preferably in a house that he actually liked.

“Draco, your mother is pleasant enough.”

“Stunning observation, Harry.”

“Oh sod off, do you think she would be willing to take a rather large request from me?”

Draco looked a tad nervous, “I suppose it depends on what it is.”

“Could you give me her owl address?”

“Certainly.”

“Brilliant, don't worry yourself too much about it then.”

Sirius went bonkers having to live in Grimmauld Place, but he would go considerably more bonkers roughing it out in the woods. Narcissa Malfoy was his cousin and (relatively) pleasant to Harry himself, and while he wouldn't in a million years expect the woman to ever be willing to hide Sirius in one of the Malfoy homes, it would be quite easy to request the keys to one of the nicer Black homes, he was the second in line and heir presumptive after all, that held a rather decent amount of sway as it was. Harry had no doubt she would fight him on the concept, but they were both slytherins, it would be simple enough to come to an agreement.

_If push comes to shove, I can al ways imperious her an d come to the same result._

The hardest part of this plan was, of course, getting Sirius to agree to the whole stint in the first place. Harry found it doubtful that the crazy bastard would agree to live in anyplace his equally crazy family had lived, and would likely just stick to the woods if given a choice. As it was, Harry could be very persuasive if agreements could not be met. 

“Honestly, those two are just obnoxious.” Harry was broken from his musings by Draco’s annoyed voice, and he followed the boy’s line of sight to Daphne and Blaise, who were talking with their heads bent together, giggling occasionally. Harry squinted in confusion, since when did Blaise _giggle?_

“What do you mean?”

Draco scoffed at him, appearing flabbergasted and disgusted, though Harry could only guess which emotion was pointed where. “Those two are very obviously _flirting,_ and I find it revolting.”

Harry glanced back at the two, watching as Blaise brushed a hand along Daphne’s shoulder, and how she raised her own to meet his, their hands awkwardly tangled together as they giggled. He raised an eyebrow, could that even be considered flirting? There was a considerable lack of words being exchanged to make it anything more than obvious pinning.

“I don’t see the issue.”

Draco sputtered, “don't see the issue? This is a clear breach in tact! They are just standing there and-and _touching!”_

Harry turned the raised eyebrow onto his soulmate, “so touching is the problem?”

“Yes!”

“I distinctly remember a rather... touchy habit of yours.” He glanced down to where Draco clutched Harry’s inner sleeve tightly, the fabric of his uniform crumpling slightly under the stress. “Or have you forgotten where your hand is currently placed?”

Draco’s sputtering gained volume as his face gained a blush, his eyes darting anywhere but Harry’s face as the taller boy grinned in amusement.

_Cute._

“Th-this is completely different! Firstly, the only reason I hold onto your sleeve like this is so that you don't wander off! Something that you are quite privy to, might I add.” Harry wasn't convinced, squinting slightly in mock question as the rather impressive blush crept further down the shorter boy’s neck. “And-and they are obviously flirting, this is just a-uh, it's just a thing!”

“A thing?”

“Y-yes.”

“Hmm… so you would let go of me at any time with little to no qualms?”

Harry tried very hard not to laugh as Draco appeared conflicted, obviously trying to choose between letting go of Harry’s sleeve right then and sparing his dignity, or keeping his hold and admitting defeat.

Turning suddenly, Draco determinalty stared center front, having found a third option, which appeared to consist of ignoring Harry’s existence while still clutching his sleeve. Humming again, Harry turned to look at Blaise and Daphne, who were now officially holding hands, fingers interlocked as they grappled with this new step in their apparent relationship. He watched as Blaise nervously rubbed his shaved head, the soft stubble granting some sort of therapeutic feeling as a blush painted his cheeks. Daphne had her eyes pinned firmly to the floor, corners of her eyes crinkling in happiness as a smile seemed to be permanently fixed to her face, glittering eyes glancing occasionally up to the embarrassed boy clutching her hand like a lifeline. Harry smiled, the uncertainty of firsts always seemed to overplay the actual action, caution and confusion seeping into the minds of two people and making everything just a little off-just a little strained. It was strange though, he had felt that uncertainty plenty of times in his first life, but never in this one-never with Draco-he was always assured… both of them were.

Glancing back to Draco or, more accurately, the back of Draco’s head, he contemplated everything from the incomplete soul bond to the click of the other boy’s perfectly polished shoes against the stone below. There was something gratifying about soulmates, something familiar that made you immune to the awkwardness of firsts. He wanted to say something, wanted to breach the paper-thin wall between their souls and force some sort of connection on Draco’s end, help him understand just _what_ that connection was, but didn’t know how-didn’t know if he even should.

He chose instead to carefully pry the boy’s fingers from his sleeve, replacing the fabric with his own hand, his much larger palm nearly enveloping Draco’s considerably smaller one. The Malfoy heir went stiff, before lagging back a moment, just long enough to brush arms with him. There they walked, calmly and with no outward change like Daphne and Blaise, already comfortable with being connected at the hip.

It wasn’t much, and it certainly wasn't flirting, and their heads weren’t bent together and they didn't blush. It felt just as it always did, and no one who passed by even glanced at their now intertwined hands, the occurrence of Draco dragging Harry along too common to warrant even a whisper of gossip. Harry hadn’t expected anything to feel different though; he hadn’t expected the warmth to double or his cheeks to flush, and it didn't, because this was Draco, he didn't need to feel flustered to feel happy, he didn’t need physical touch to feel the near-completion of the soul bond as their hearts reached desperately for each other. Physical limitations were so fickle when your entire being was wrapped up in another, holding hands just wasn't comparable when you were so focused on an almost. Harry clutched the warm hand tighter, wishing he would just say something-just break the wall and feel true satisfaction-feel the euphoria of a complete soul bond. But he didn't, and instead settled into the gentle, warm touch and familiar heartbeat. Acknowledging the incompleteness but not acting to rectify it. Not knowing how, or if he should.

It wasn’t any different from as it always was, but it was good.

It was good enough.

Not quite what he wanted, but good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this is, once again, a day late. My girlfriend was feeling sad a couple days ago when I would have been finishing this chapter, so instead of writing I played minecraft with her and had to finish it yesterday. I would say I regret my actions but that would be a lie :P
> 
> In regards to Luna and how she sees: Luna can still see inanimate objects that haven't been embedded with magic just fine, and things that have been enchanted or something just show that they have the magic on them. The only thing that she really struggles to see is people, as she is only capable of seeing their magic (she doesn't have this problem with muggles or squibs) and heavily enchanted books because she can't read the words. I have been contemplating several different avenues to take Luna's eyes, as I am sticking to the idea that each seer has something wrong with their physical eyes, and finally settled onto perminate magic sight (or whatever you want to call it lol). The idea is based somewhat on Harry's ability to see in the fic Blindness by AngelaStarCat, which to this day stands as my favorite harry potter fic of all time. If you have read it, you might occasionally find subtle influences from the characterizations from that fic in this one, but only lightly (except for Luna's eyes, which are basically a shitty rip-off lmao (I'm sorry AngelaStarCat, it had to be done)). It is a Harmione fic if you are swayed away from that particular ship (as am I generally, but really this fic makes it SO good ok) and honestly? I've yet to read something that comes close to how much I adored it, so if you have an afternoon to spare please go read it! Ahem, but anyway: I think all of this (except for the book recommendation) were explained pretty well in the chapter itself but you can never be too sure sometimes, I just want to make sure the ability is properly conveyed to my audience!
> 
> P.S. Every Luna POV and scene I write is always brainstormed to the song Bamboleo and finalized to From Eden, because the pure chaos of Bamboleo is necessary to get her natural absurdity down pat, and then the soothing romantic vibes of From Eden are then brushed along to polish her personality off as chaotically wistful. (yes, every POV is written to a general vibe of song (Harry is 80's punk exclusively, Draco is chaotic/horny classical, so on and so forth) so that the personalities fit accurately. And yes, there is never any music playing when I write Dumbledore POV)
> 
> Edit: A lot of people have been asking so I'll just say it here in the notes. Blindness is on fanfiction.net, and here's a link to the first chapter <3:  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10937871/1/Blindness


	64. An Angel's Halo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentines day rounds the bend, and with mysteries piling up and no method to solve them in sight, Harry submits himself to an angel's touch and unsteady heartbeats.

Harry watched the subtle movement of breathing from where he sat behind a desk, contemplating the various ways that a human took in nutrients to live. The first was food, obviously, which was eaten and then digested, the necessary compounds and minerals going separate ways from the waste. The sugars and carbohydrates and proteins all going towards the necessary processes that make the body function. Then there was water, which made up 70% of the human body. Water which is necessary for so many things in the body that one would die so very quickly without it. Then, of course, there was air, which is required for respiration and transfer of heat and transfer of blood-for oxidation of the blood-which allowed for consciousness and exercise and cellular respiration.

He watched Draco’s back rise and fall, the steady breathing of sleep forcing him to realize how far gone from human he had become.

Harry ate, he desired food and water and got tired and slept and his heart still beat but it was _skewed_ in some way. He hadn't fully realized it until he held Draco’s hand and ghosted a finger over the ruby-inlade ring and observed the jerky, nonuniform beat of his own heart. If he was normal, the beat of his heart could have lended him to have either a severe case of arrhythmia, or perhaps even a heart attack.

That was it, either he had a disease or was in constant risk of keeling over.

He stood, moving from the desk to the bed and settling down, watching the steady, rhythmic breathing with careful eyes. Obviously, Harry couldn't comprehend either possibility being even remotely true, so he gathered his knowledge (both muggle and magical) and attempted to come to a different conclusion. He breathed, just as everyone did, and when he paid attention to his breathing it was just the same as everyone else's, but that didn’t mean that it was always like that. It was very possible that he breathed just as irregularly as his heart beat. So, he ran tests, as one did when contemplating their body’s own ability to function properly.

_Ba-bum… ba...bu-bu-bu-bum.. Bum-bum..um-bum_

Holding the ring on Draco’s sleeping hand, Harry felt for his own heart, sitting propped up against the headboard as it thud and shuttered and broke over and over again, as if it was lazily pretending to work the way it should-like it was bored of the typical steady thumping and decided to make a tune with his circulatory vascular system’s main component. His heart, effectively, didn’t seem to be doing its job-or even needing to! He couldn’t comprehend his own breathing in any capacity, but knew somewhat that it was likely his respiratory system wasn’t functioning properly either. He didn't get out of breath-no matter how fast he ran or for how long-and duels always left him feeling just the same as before, his breathing just as steady as it would be when relaxing.

_This is… worrying._

Harry felt that he might be slightly downplaying the fact that his heart and lungs were, quite obviously, obsolete and therefore unnecessary to his continued survival. Was he dead? Dying? It was hard to say because he was actually feeling quite good, relatively speaking, and likely wouldn't have even realized that something might actually be wrong unless he had found out about the irregularity of his own pulse. Sure, he had the discomfort of an incomplete soul bond to contend with, but the likelihood of that minor annoyance being equatable to a severe case of heart arrhythmia combined with chronic bradypnea was incredibly low.

_Alright, so it is slightly above worrying. Disturbing perhaps?_

He reached for Draco’s bare back, brushing a hand down the temporary runic tattoos that kept his wings from sight, contemplating his new-found medical issue. They were napping-at least Draco was-in the dorm while Blaise ran about in preparation for valentines, which was the next day. Draco had quickly fallen asleep, rocked into slumber by the teen’s worried ranting, not interested in the least about which shirt Daphne would prefer over another, or what conjured flowers would look best in her hair. Harry was likely even less invested in the conversation, but had been theorizing about the possibility of him also not truly needing sleep, and had been hypothesizing about how exactly he could test it without the potential dip in his marks if it was proven that he did indeed need sleep to function, so he was firmly awake in spite of his disinterest.

_Do I truly need to eat either?_

That idea was quickly brushed aside, even if his blood and breath were faulty, Harry was assured that he needed to eat, his constant ravenous hunger proved that much. What he needed to eat though, was on the table as potentially different from what he believed.

Humans needed sugar, carbohydrates, protein, minerals, fats, and vitamins to function at full capacity. However, this did not mean that he needed all of that as well. Draco afterall, was far more inclined to eat meat now that he had had his creature inheritance, and turned his nose up at everything from pumpkin juice to broccoli, instead eating all varieties of proteins to survive. Draco’s gastrointestinal system-his digestive tract-had altered itself with his inheritance so that it was only capable of taking nutrients from meat, not being able to digest vegetables properly, and his taste buds changed as well to reflect that. Harry could only assume that he himself had changed with his inheritance as well, and his body’s systems were therefore altering in some way to reflect that of a wendigo.

Now all that was left was to figure out what that meant for him.

He had ordered various books on wendigos, all written by the native tribes of northern America, and all of which were riddled with legends and attacks but not much about the physical processes of the animal.

_Is it truly an animal though?_

That was a question that tended to keep him up at night, as no one was completely positive of what the blasted creature even _was._ Many believed that it wasn't fully corporeal, instead something of a spirit that infected human bodies and altered them for its own purposes. This idea held credence, as the demon seemed to be a separate entity in his mind than an extension of it, though he would have to ask Draco or perhaps Lord Malfoy about their own personal experiences with their creatures. Either way, Harry was starting to question if the possibility of his wendigo being a spirit or demon of some sort was starting to bleed over into him. It would certainly explain why his heart seemed to only do its job out of a sense of bored obligation, or how he wasn’t even sure he needed to eat human food, but did it anyway to, again, fulfill obligation. Was he even gaining anything from eating meals anymore, or would he only be able to gain nutrients from eating human meat?

The idea struck a chord in him, he had only eaten one person before, and while he was certainly planning the unfortunate end of another, the act of cannibalism had always been rather unsavory to him. There was a clear divide-to him at least-between occasional blood letting for the purposes of getting a drink, and repeatedly and consistently eating other human beings. Though, perhaps once he did it again, after having had his official inheritance, he would have a different opinion on the practice.

_Could it even be considered cannibalism if I'm not technically human?_

Sure, a magical creature that attacked and killed humans was swiftly put down for their crimes, but no one had ever killed a wendigo for eating a person-partially because it was suicide to even attempt. Trully, could someone blame him for attacking if it was his only mode of survival? Vampires could drink all different kinds of animal blood, and only the ones who purposefully searched out human blood were reprimanded for it. Logically, he couldn't be held responsible for his own search for nutrients, no matter how ‘immoral’ it was. Because really, immorality was a subject that should be up for serious debate, as anyone could alter what fell under the term with their own personal perspective. Voldemort didn't see _anything_ immoral to an extent, so logically the concept of immorality was flawed in the manner that it was subjective.

Draco continued to breath softly, Blaise tried on a twelfth outfit.

Harry sighed, his hand trailing from his soulmates back up to his head, taking a gentle fist of hair and kneading the boy’s scalp with his fingers in soothing motions. These thought experiments were getting him nowhere. Regardless of what he personally thought on the subject, the state still outlawed ‘cannibalism’ even if he could prove that technically he hadn't been human during consumption. Either way, he would still be doing what was necessary for his own survival, regardless of what the ministry would say about it if they caught wind. If that involved willingly consuming human flesh, then he would just have to get off his high horse and get it done.

Harry made a face, watching as Blaise attempted to comprehend the mind of his beau in order to dress appropriately for a date that was now quite obviously going to be awkward to a fault. He had proven without a shadow of doubt that his heart was likely unnecessary and therefore only still beating (if irregularly and quite possibly cheekily) to bring Draco comfort, or in the very least to be assured that his skin didn’t become unreasonably pale from the loss of blood flow. It was also likely then (if it was irregular as he theorized it to be) that his breathing was nothing short of habit. If he had stopped needing these important bodily functions on his thirteenth birthday, then it was likely that not only was he horribly dense for not realizing it sooner, but that he would no doubt need to convince his aunt against the yearly check-ups with their pediatrician that they always had over the summer, as it was practically confirmed that the results would send the entire family into a tizzy.

 _And I suppose ever going to the hospital wing is out of the picture._ It was hardly a stressor in his life-the hospital wing that is-but the concept of Dumbledore finding out about this... previously unknown medical issue held far too many variables for Harry to bother even attempting to come to a conclusive series of events that would follow the no doubt chaotic and awfully dramatic diagnosis.

Draco muttered something about chicken in his sleep, Blaise checked out his ass in the mirror for an eighth time. What it seemed to him was that, if the wendigo was truly a demon of some sort, then it fed on human bodies exclusively. He was not so bold as to say that he was therefore only able to gain nutrients from human meat, as he had lasted the months since his birthday relatively fine on just an elevated level of nutrients. However, it was likely that the act of eating human flesh gave him some sort of power boost that was necessary for his growth, or perhaps it allowed him satisfaction? Considering the constant ache of hunger that he was now quite good at ignoring, the idea had credence, though Harry was cautious to test it earlier than the time he had allotted for himself. The concept of being full for the first time in seven months was an extremely tempting one sure, but Harry hadn't gotten desperate enough to attempt something so foolhardy.

Draco grabbed for his hand and latched on sleepily, Blaise was contemplating using magic to make his hair grow out, just to see what it would look like.

“Honestly mate, I think you’re overthinking this whole thing.”

The nervous teen held his wand aloft, looking into the mirror and turning his head one way and another, as if questioning if he should attempt it. “Says you, I bet you’ve never even considered the stress of a first date.”

Harry thought back to a sobbing Cho and winced minutely, glad that his first date had never happened in this life. “True, but growing out your hair after never having it longer than a half inch is going a tad far.”

“But what if she wants to run her hands through it!”

 _Isn't it thick enough for that to be near impossible?_ “What if she doesn't?”

Blaise grumbled, turning back to the mirror and appearing conflicted. “Alright, but what if we-uh, well what if we k-kiss, and she wants to pull at it or something? My mum sometimes says that she prefers men with longer hair so she can give it a good tug.”

“Well firsty, your mom’s a bit of an outlier, considering her rather large body count.” Blaise winced, not knowing if Harry was talking about dead bodies or conquests. “-and besides, tugging hair should be your job.”

Draco snorted loudly, waking up fully from his sleep as Blaise’s tanned skin went several shades darker. “I'd like to see that, maybe you'll pull a few extensions out.” This promptly sent Blaise into an indignant rant about the naturality of Daphne’s ‘golden trestles’.

The poor sod was whipped. As it was, Harry only felt mild sympathy as he watched Draco’s rather defined back muscles stretch and contract, the shorter boy rising from where he laid to turn and argue further with Blaise.

Perhaps they were all feeling the effects of the season.

* * *

The next day found Theo reading in the library, hiding away from the drama of valentines day and wishing desperately just to get some bloody homework done. 

Luna seemed intent on making that desperate wish impossible.

“Do you think the moon has feelings?”

She lounged, her tiny legs hanging across the plush couch as her hair splayed across his legs. She held her father’s paper in her hands-The Quibble or something-and a strange array of multi-color beads. She stared up at the ceiling with something akin to curiosity, moving her head back and forth as if contemplating the shape and size of something. He made an effort to not look up, feeling assured that he would find nothing but mahogany ceiling carvings and elaborate woodwork. Instead, Theo looked into her not-quite-seeing eyes, contemplated what it was about the girl that made her… like that. 

“The moon is a large rock in space, which controls the tides and enraptures poets. It doesn't have feelings because it is not sentient.”

“What if it _was_ sentient?”

Theo took a very deep and very long breath, closing his eyes and contemplated how on earth this utterly illogical person could have possibly ended up being his best friend. “Then I suppose we shall remove our robes and frolic under the full moon each month with the werewolves and hope it saves us from our dull, stressful lives.”

 _“Your_ dull, stressful life you mean.”

He tried, very hard then, to ignore the sparse few moments that Luna completely and utterly tore him to pieces, her sass had come out in full force today it seemed. “Yes Luna, my incredibly boring, inconsequential life.”

“I didn't say it was inconsequential!” she rolled over on her stomach, her weird sunglasses pushing up her forehead as she snuggled his thigh. He pretended that his face didn’t heat up at the affection. “You are just constantly and consistently stressed, and you really need to stop it.”

“Stop being stressed?”

“Mhm.”

_Sounds awfully irresponsible._

“I believe, Miss. Luna Lovegood, that your logic is a tad flawed.”

She wriggled around like a worm for a bit, supposedly trying to get comfortable before finally settling and staring up at some area in his stomach. He wondered what she was looking at that enraptured her attention so often, besides the lint sticking to his robes.

“I don't think it is.”

“I suppose you wouldn't, considering that it is _your_ logic.”

She trailed her cloudy eyes up from his stomach, following an invisible pattern to his face, where her gaze settled somewhere to the left of his nose. Luna had yet to tell him the extent of her eyes’ damage, though as she often requested that he read books for her, Theo could only assume she might have some sort of visual impairment. Perhaps she was farsighted? She likely would have gotten glasses if that was the case.

“I think logic is flawed as a concept.”

His left eye twitched, the blasphemy of the girl’s words making him want to rant on about how life could, quite literally, not exist without logic holding the universe’s chaotic elements together.

“Oh? Why is that?” He ground out, his voice heavy in sarcasm as she prepared to no doubt make a mess of his entire world view.

Luna did not disappoint.

“Well, logic is naturally a tad finicky, as each person uses it in different ways. So, technically, the use of logic can be, naturally, quite illogical. Therefore, the only way to be assured that you are being logical, is by being completely illogical.”

He just stared, looking down at the insane little ball of a girl lounging across his lap like some sort of absurdly smug kitten. “You're mental, you know that right?”

She giggled, and booped his nose. “Of course, honey boy.”

* * *

Harry stretched his arms up to the sky, his trousers rolled up to his knees and feet planted firmly in the icy water of the black lake. Draco was a few paces ahead of him, water up to his mid-thigh and trousers irreversibly soaked. They had spent the day lounging about outside, before moesing down to the water, joking about their friends’ romantic exploits while ignoring their own. It was tricky business, pretending that you weren't on the cusp of something with someone, but Harry managed well enough, he hoped.

“Do you reckon we’ll find the two of them holled up in some corner, snogging each other senseless?” For someone so supposedly disgusted by the acts of physical affection, Draco sure did seem to contemplate it a lot.

“Blaise doesn't have the nerve, he’d probably just pass out if she tried.” The two of them worked well together, but for as stubborn and ambitious Blaise could be, he was gentle hearted in truth, preferring to go with the flow of things instead of against them. Daphne on the other hand, flourished in harrowing environments, she was one that could fashion an army out of a few planks of wood and a ball of twine, and watching the two of them fall over each other in an effort to pader to the other’s strengths was not only incredibly amusing but a tad pathetic.

“You don't think he wrote a poem for her, do you?” 

Harry looked past Draco and to the shimmering lake they stood at the precipice of, their feet waded just far enough to assure them safety, but not enough to be considered satisfying. If the lake wasn’t full of dangerous creatures and giant squids, then it was very likely that students would swim in it whenever possible or comfortable.

As it was, no one had the nerve.

“If he did, one of us would have had to proofread it.”

“Mhm, fair point.”

He looked at Draco then, admiring his pale hair and fair complexion. Despite his sharp edges, Draco was soft and warm, his biting personality doing nothing to sharpen the softness in his eyes. Draco had calloused hands, but unblemished, revealing that he was skilled but cautious, making an effort to not injure himself while still putting in greater skill and practice than needed. His chin was pointy, his collarbone and cheeks sharp with definition, his nose pointed as if drawn with a ruler, aristocratic and yet… gentle.

Harry blinked, and threw another rock into the lake, swallowing thickly and refusing to think any further of long white eyelashes or pink lips. “I’m sure he managed well enough, his mother’s genes had to have transferred over in some capacity.”

Draco grunted, “I don't know what ‘jeans’ are supposed to be, but her natural ability to seduce those of the opposite sex has no doubt revealed itself in him, one way or another.”

Harry rolled his eyes, picking up a small pebble and throwing it lightly at the back of Draco’s knees. “Why did you drop muggle studies again? It would have done you a great deal of help.”

“Because it was centuries out of date and full of puffs!” Draco replied with an indignant yell, splashing around and fishing through the murky water for something to retaliate with.

“Oh of course, and I'm sure it had nothing to do with you not understanding the material though, right Dray?” A pebble of slightly larger size whizzed through the air and smacked into his inner thigh, uncomfortably close to more sensitive regions.

“Don’t be so idiotic, Potter, everyone knows I’m the smartest student of our year.” Harry kicked a leg out, laughing as Draco screeched in anger as a splash of icy water surged upwards, enveloping him in the freezing chill.

“Oh sure, say that to your fourth in year ranking, why don't you?” Draco decided to forgo all tact and pulled his wand, sending a pulse of energy through the water towards him, which surged up into a concentrated wave, crashing down on Harry and shoving him on his back, entire body soaked as he laughed his arse off. Reaching out, Harry did the same but in the opposite direction, effectively pulling Draco’s feet from under him and sending the boy crashing into the water with a splash, bird-like screeches of indignation accompanying him on the way down. Draco seemed to fumble a bit, before sitting up with a start, spitting water from his mouth as he glared at Harry, who reclined back against the rocks below him, the water shallow enough to allow the relaxed stance.

“Tosser.”

Harry replied with another burst of magic, which sent Draco back into the water with a sputtered shout. Laughing lightly to himself, Harry shambled to his feet and waded through the water, watching as Draco resurfaced with a look of fiery retribution burning in his eyes. Harry allowed himself to be pulled by the ankle into the icy water once more, arms and legs tangled up in themselves and the two boys wrestled on the murky shore, attempting to keep their heads above the chilly water long enough to breath before quickly getting dunked by the other.

Harry reached out with his magic and grasped hold of the coming tide once more, accidentally sending both of them closer inland as he did, the man-made wave he inadvertently created sending them tumbling for a moment before Harry felt the rocky shore at his back, and suddenly they had resurfaced again. 

He sputtered, rubbing water from his eyes and brushing aside the hair clinging there too, attempting to clear his vision from the stinging water as Draco coughed. Once the pesky liquid was wiped away however, Harry opened his eyes to find a sea of stormy gray, two stunning eyes decorated with water-soaked lashes, the boy’s fair skin overtaken with an incredible blush. Draco had ended up on top of him it seemed, the both of them a tangle of limbs and wet clothes and a stinging, sudden clarity that rocked the very foundation of earth.

The clouds parted in that moment, almost as if on cue, and a gentle ray of sunlight fell down onto Draco, illuminating his head like a halo. They were so close, he realized distantly, the other boy’s breath sending puffs of air onto his face. Harry nearly wanted to reach out, wanted to grab his soulmate’s waist and pull him closer, the waves gently lapping at their feet and warm breaths mingling. 

Instead he simply looked, his mind short circuiting as cold waves chilled his feet and warm hands grasped his shirt. 

Near-white hair, plastered to his face from the water and tousled from the waves. Pink cheeks, from the cold or embarrassment or merlin knew what else. Parted lips, wide eyes, long lashes. Harry took a shuddering breath, realizing for-apparently the first time-how truly angelic Draco Malfoy was.

Harry could hardly stop himself from saying it, the admission tumbling from his lips as if Fate herself had forced it from his mouth, and he nearly sagged in relief for finally speaking the words he felt so suddenly needed to be spoken-needed to be made _known._ Draco’s breath hitched, eyes widening and blush deepening and _merlin_ the world was near collapse, and he was just barely sitting on the precipice of infinity, observing an angel in all its glory as the fiery sun in the sky warmed him and the water at his back tempted to pull him into the ice he was so utterly and completely a part of. Was melting worth this? Harry thought so, everything was worth destroying for a chance to see such a breathtaking creature every day of his life. He took a shuddering breath, and said the words again, almost as if to assure himself that this was real. That he was not imagining what was sure to be the greatest sight on planet earth.

“I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *throws six horny teenagers into the void*  
> The void: ASDFLRIFDF baBieS dsfafjasd;kfhdj kis (* ￣3)(ε￣ *)  
> Me: now make me relevant.
> 
> Happy now? I've officially given you a chapter that is solidly 85% fluff. I feel tainted and unsatisfied, but there isn't a lick of angst in sight, I hope you soft fools are satisfied with my one and only attempt to make this story carefree in the least. (honestly, if you want a soft story just go over to Earthy Heavens, that's where I throw all the beautiful imagery and happy childhoods anyway.)
> 
> Jokes aside, I was actually not planning that last bit in the least, Harry was going to say 'you're beautiful' and that would be that, drama and shit was sure to follow but definity not a decleration of fucking love. But I looked over the chapter, and then my extensive notes, and a deep carnal sense that this is absolutely how their story needs to play out overtook me and I preceded to rewrite a good portion of the next two years in order to make this work because now it's happening and I'll damn all my plans to hell if it means making it work.


	65. Things Left Unsaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has much that has been left unsaid, and decided firmly that action is better than drifting apart from people important to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that Italics in the open are thoughts, italics in quotations are whispers, and italics in quotations and these little squiggle lines ~ are parseltongue.

It had come completely out of nowhere.

Green eyes stared up at him as if he was a bird soaring over the infinite forests of a faraway land, and Draco felt the onset of a forest fire raging away in his chest. Really, he had been just about to get off the bastard’s chest, apologize for the upset, and lick his wounds while ignoring what Harry’s firm body pressed against his own had felt like. But then that admission has come quietly tumbling from the lips of the devil, and Draco had been shocked stiff in response, not quite sure he had even heard him correctly. Maybe he had said ‘I loathe you’ or ‘get off me, you’ and Draco had-like the lovesick fool that he was-completely misinterpreted what had been spoken. 

But then, because apparently he hadn’t suffered enough in his thirteen years, the bastard had said it  _ again,  _ his eyes widening with excitement and voice more sure than before, head leaned farther up as if saying those words had breathed life back into a shambling corpse.

“I love you.”

It was unfair, first off, as those green eyes rarely held all that much excitement for anything, and the undisguised happiness and trepidation they revealed in that moment was enough to send Draco spiralling. It was also  _ absurdly _ romantic, as freezing waves lapped at his feet and cold fingers came up to rest cautiously at the base of his back. So really, it was perfectly reasonable of him to need a few minutes to comprehend the sudden and aggressive shift in conversation, as well as have a few well deserved heart palpitations.

What was he even  _ supposed  _ to say? Something along the lines of ‘I love you too, well-maybe, as I have actually been putting a fair amount of energy in ignoring my feelings as I was quite sure you didn't see me in a romantic light, but now that I am being faced with this dream-like scenario my brain is currently going into shock and I'm going to need several minutes and a warm towel over my eyes to manage a reply’. Draco took a deep breath of air, and watched as those big green eyes stayed right where they were, patiently waiting. Harry was brilliant like that, always seeming to know if he needed time and graciously allowing him all the time in the world. 

So Draco gave himself a moment to think.

There was such a huge line between having a crush and actually acting on it, especially if said crush was Harry bloody Potter, but there was something so extremely and obviously _ different _ between the two of them that he could no longer ignore. Blaise and Greengrass had opened his eyes really-how they interacted that was. Draco knew that he was utterly enraptured by Harry, and would likely streak arse naked through the halls of Hogwarts if the pretty bastard told him too, but he didn't act the way Blaise-or even Greengrass-did. He wasn’t giggly or flirty and he certainly didn’t get all obnoxiously flustered at the drop of a hat, but there was a deep feeling of affection that he carried around for the teen he was currently lounging across. His interactions and constant physical proximity to Harry didn't give him butterflies, it just felt how it should be-how  _ he _ should be-there wasn't anything besides… satisfaction? He couldn't quite grasp the feeling, but completion was close. Absolution? Even as he sat there, his nose nearly brushing against Harry’s own, he didn't feel nervous about the closeness or unsure about the potential affection, just unease with how he should answer. 

Harry’s eyes roamed his face and shoulders, watching as deep red flames flickered into existence across Draco’s arms, before fizzling out when a droplet of water ran across them. He still hadn’t said anything. He was still laying across Harry’s chest as the boy very politely waited for a response. Despite the cold water lapping at his toes and colder hands on his back, Draco felt as though he was very near lighting the lake on fire. Harry still wasn’t looking at him, the distinct creep of a blush crawling up his neck as he seemed to focus on just about anything else but Draco’s eyes.

_ I really need to say something. _

Draco relaxed his shoulders, and his forehead thunked gently onto Harry’s and he breathed a sigh.  “You do?”

He hated how vulnerable his voice sounded, so unsure and cautious, he also hated how fast his heart was racing now that their lips were mere inches apart, Harry could obviously feel it.

_ What an utter embarrassment. _

A hand left his lower back, reaching up and gently brushing against his jaw, as if testing the waters. Draco leaned into it, feeling the constant heat he lived in dissipate some, as if lava had dripped into the arctic ocean.

“Dray…” his eyes opened again, meeting the emerald green that looked at him with something akin to worship. “I begin and end with you.”

Now that was just cheating.

“Stop that, you ponce.”

“Wh-stop what?”

He groaned loudly, shoving Harry’s face to the side as the taller boy laughed. “Saying poetic shite like that! You know well and good how my poetic capabilities fare.”

Harry’s smile widened, and he leaned teasingly into the hand that was attempting to press him under the icy waves. “What-that being that you are so utterly horrendous at being verbally affectionate that a deaf man would wrinkle his nose at your attempt to serenade him?”

Draco rolled his eyes, shifting upwards onto his forearms and regarding Harry with an unimpressed look. “I would word it very differently, but yes.”

Harry laughed, the sound like a sinful mix between an angels harp and the devil’s singing. “You're awfully good at redirecting the conversation, you know.”

Draco felt lighter now that the silence had been broken, but still didn’t know quite what to say. He had been cautious to label what he was feeling as ‘love’ even in his own mind, to attempt to admit it out loud seemed to be rushing into things. Hell, he wasn't even sure he fully believed Harry when he said that he really did, honestly and truly, love him. What was he to do, throw caution to the wind and proclaim a love he wasn’t even positive he possessed to a person that he cared about more than life itself?

“I-I fancy you… I suppose.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, “you suppose?”

He huffed, “listen here Potter, I need far longer than the three minutes you’ve allotted me to consider the ins and outs of my own personal affection for you, and even longer than that to decide conclusively if that is, indeed, love.”

The excited gleam in Harry’s eyes returned, “but there is affection there, yes? You do fancy me?”

Draco’s already rather prominent blush deepened, bubbly excitement welling up from his stomach and making him want to do nothing but lean down just a little bit and-

_ Stop that, you swine. _

“Of course there's affection you twit, who do you take me for?”

The hand on his back pressed him closer, the other one coming up to touch his cheek again. Harry’s eyes were sparkling with a devious excitement that Draco had never seen before, and the sight nearly made him melt into the water below them. “Someone with very good taste in men?” The tone was light, spilling from a mouth turned upwards into a giddy smile, as if Harry couldn’t contain his glee.

“If you want compliments on your physical form, I'm afraid you won’t find them in me.” Draco was attempting to cobble together some modicum of self respect, hoping that if he acted flippant enough the blush would recede. All thought went out the window however, when Harry yanked him forward into a bone crushing hug, cradling Draco’s head in the crook of his neck and rocking slightly in the water, sending gentle ripples through the lake.

“I really do love you, Dray.”

He had never seen Harry like this, it was as if every little thing that his mind was usually occupied with flew out the window to be ignored. Relaxing his muscles, Draco slouched into the hug, arms maneuvering to grab at Harry’s sides as he pressed his face closer to the boy’s neck. 

_ I love you too. _

* * *

**Lady Narcissa Malfoy,**

**I hope this letter reaches you well, and that you and yours are all in good spirits. I know this is rather unclouth to come out and say, but I thought that it might be prudent to make my placement in the Black lineage known. You see, upon my re-entry into the British Magical world, it came to my attention through Gringotts that I was second in line to the Black heirship, with Sirius Black being the Heir apparent. Through his death, I have realized that the title has now fallen quite suddenly onto me. As you, Lady Malfoy, are one of the last Blacks that are not disgraced or in Azkaban, I thought that it would be prudent to ask for your personal opinion on the Lordship, as well as any properties I may inherit.**

**All the best, Heir Hadrian Potter**

**~**

**Heir Potter,**

**Think nothing of your bluntness dear, Draco is far worse I’m afraid. In fact, I daresay that your letter was incredibly useful for understanding my son’s placement in the line. I had assumed that he would be gaining the title, though it is unsurprising that you managed to snatch it away!**

**On the subject of the Lordship, I am afraid to say that I know little about it. I was part of the second branch of the Blacks, and because of that the option of becoming Lord was out of the picture for me. However, all the Black properties were left in my care after the last lord passed, so I may be of some assistance in that department. I am afraid that the only one currently lived in by anything is the Black ancestral home 12 Grimmauld Place, which houses a house elf. There is also a cabin in Northern Wales, though I do believe that Cassiopeia Black is haunting it, so I doubt it is very pleasant to live in. Several other homes dot the countryside, but sadly, I believe that the only other notable home is a beach house in France, though I haven't been there in years.**

**If you feel so inclined towards taking a vacation, I believe that the France villa would be the best.**

**Regards, Narcissa Malfoy.**

**P.S. Do you mind telling Draco to owl me? That boy has yet to do much other than request sweets for all of January and February, I’m starting to think he doesn’t care for me any longer.**

**~**

**Lady Malfoy,**

**Thank you for the kind words, I assure you that I understand exactly what you mean in regards to Draco, he can be rather blunt on occasion. In fact, just the other day he insinuated he appreciated my company less than I enjoyed his. I’m getting ahead of myself however, to be completely truthful, I am still contemplating if I should keep hold of the Black Lordship, as I already have two to contend with and a third seems much too stressful. As it is however, I was actually hoping to see if there were any homes that were not in use, as I am unable to practice much magic in the muggle area that I inhabit, and thought that a summer home would be a pleasant for both myself and my family. In fact, I was actually planning to go abroad to France this summer for private study, and would certainly enjoy having a home in which family would visit me at. Do you think it would be possible for me to borrow the key to the France Villa?**

**All the best, Hadrian Potter**

**~**

**Hadrian,**

**I was not aware that Draco could be so crass, thank you for bringing this to my attention, I'll be sure to cut down on his favorite candy in the next care package as punishment. In regards to the Villa, I have inclosed the key and address with this letter. I have no use for the place, as the Malfoy family already has several much larger homes in better areas of France, so it really is no trouble. I was not aware that you were heir of more than the Potter title, was the inheritance not made public I wonder?**

**It is delightful that you are expanding your education to private tutors in other countries, Draco adamantly refuses to do such a thing. I suppose he must consider it something of a bore-he tends to do that with everything but quidditch and potions-I worry that he’ll turn into Severus Snape before long.**

**Regards, Narcissa Malfoy**

**~**

**Lady Malfoy,**

**Thank you very much for the key and address, I will use it well. I hope that you would reconsider limiting Draco’s sugar intake, as he gets rather grouchy when it is withheld. I have in fact kept one of my inherited titles private from the public knowledge, as it is rather controversial and I would prefer that it was left alone until I am confident my public image will not suffer due to it. I'm sure I can trust your discretion in this matter.**

**In regards to Draco, I have no doubt that he will be a rather brilliant potions master, as I struggle to keep ahead of him in the class on some days. The concept of him becoming Professor Snape is a rather bleak one however, as I'm sure that Draco has much better hair and personality.**

**It has been an utter delight to write with you Lady Malfoy, thank you for setting aside the time for me.**

**All the best, Hadrian Potter**

* * *

Sirius woke with a start, the sound of rustling underbrush and menacing hissing setting both his human and dog instincts on edge. A whispered hiss wafted through the Forbidden forest, a reply coming from somewhere to the left of him. Padfoot watched as the colorful, massive snake he had seen on occasion lazily slither down the tree it rested on, tongue darting out as it hissed again. Something replied, and Sirius watched with wide eyes as a  _ very  _ familiar cloak melted into existence, an even more familiar boy revealing himself from under it. Harry reached up to the massive snake and hissed again, the snake butting its head against his hand as he did, replying in some manner.

_ Of course he’s a parselmouth, why the bloody hell not? _

Regardless of his godson’s apparent parseltongue abilities, Sirius was glad to see him unharmed. He had been near cardiac arrest when the Shrieking Shack had lit aflame, and his heart had certainly stopped for a few seconds when Harry dragged himself and the Malfoy boy out of the quickly burning shack, seemingly unbothered by the grotesque injury he sported. 

“Go on then, go get him for me.”

Padfoot perked up and ear, watching from where he hid as the snake reared up and-

_ Oh merlin. _

Quick as a viper, the blasted thing was upon him, almost too fast for him to realize what was happening-certainly too fast for him to do much but yelp.

“Evening Snuffles-or Sirius, I should say?” Padfoot growled angrily, thrashing in the snake’s hold. “Yeah yeah, you're real pissy I get it, do you mind transforming back to a human? Thasin wont hurt you.”

Going still, Sirius considered his options. Sure, he could continue to thrash in the hold of a very dangerous snake as his godson watched on, or he could attempt to have a potentially pleasant conversation with said godson. Making his decision rather quickly, Sirius slowly reverted back to human form, the snake unraveling and freeing him as he did. He looked up at Harry with wary eyes, who raised an eyebrow in response. “Evenin’ Black, did you know you're a dead man?”

Sirius blinked, well that was one way to tell someone you're about to kill them. “Harry, listen to me, I would never betray your parents-”

“I know that, you moron.”

He blinked… then blinked again. “I-sorry?”

Harry rolled his eyes, saying something to the snake with a tone that could almost be described as sarcastic. The snake hissed in response, and Sirius got the sneaking feeling he was getting made fun of.

“I suppose I should elaborate? You're a dead man to all of Britain, Black.”

He tilted his head in confusion, scrambling up into a sitting position as he did. “What the hell are you on about?”

Harry reached into a satchel, pulling out a folded up paper and throwing it at him. “Funny that, apparently the corpse in the shrieking shack was burned enough that the ministry decided it was you.”

Sirius skimmed through the article on his ‘death’ as the boy spoke, eyebrows furrowed in thought. It was rather insulting that the ministry thought he was Pettigrew, considering how much fat the rat bastard sported in comparison. However, if people thought that he was dead, there was the distinct possibility he would have an easier time walking around, that is if he managed to get a shower and some new clothes.

“Is this why the dementors left a few weeks ago?”

“Yup.” Harry settled down on a nearby rock, his snake ‘Thasin’ winding around his feet and making Sirius a little nervous. There were several things about this situation that felt wrong to him-as if he was being let in on some plot but not privy to any of the details. The first thing that had set him off was the seeming ease at which he had been caught, and the second being the rather relaxed posture of his godson. Sure, he had met with the boy a few times over the year, but had never spoken with him in any real capacity.

“How did you know it was me anyway? Did Remus tell you?” Harry made a face that insinuated he didn't like the werewolf all that much, wrinkling up his nose as if he had smelt something foul.

“Hardly, I've had all but five conversations with that ponce.”

_ Ponce? _

Sirius decided to put that to the side for the moment, along with the paper. “Right well… how is your shoulder?”

Harry gave him an exhausted look. “Just fine, thanks for causing it.”

“Hey now, I didn't start the fire.”

“You did trigger it though.”

He didn’t have much to say to that, mostly because he had no idea what the kid was on about. He had thought the fire had started due to the Malfoy boy being a veela of some sort, and he could hardly be counted responsible for that kid’s malfunction. Sirius watched the snake flick its tail lazily as Harry observed him with those eyes- so similar to Lily Potter’s... but not quite.

“I have a house for you to stay in and recover from azkaban.”

He blinked, the admission coming out of nowhere. A house for him? The kid didn't even know him all that well, why was he galavanting around buying houses for him? “Harry-listen, you don't know me well-even if I’m your godfather, you don't have to do this for me.”

“I could though, get to know you I mean.” The boy rustled through the satchel slung over his shoulder, relaxed and seemingly unbothered by what Sirius was trying to say. “But you can't be my godfather if you're dead.”

“I... Alright, good point, but-”

“The house is the Black Villa in France. Your cousin gave me the key under the impression that I'll be using it this summer. As I already intend to stay in France for educational purposes, I consider it your duty to take this key-” He pulled a silver key engraved with the Black crest out of the satchel, throwing it at Sirius, who caught it deftly. “-and get the hell out of the country. I’m sure you can figure a muggle mode of transport.”

“Now hold on just a bloody second-” Sirius reached forward, grabbing the boy around the wrist and holding it firmly. “Now Harry, you'll have to back this up a smidge, as I'm still grappling with the fact that you know who I am as-ah… Snuffles.”

The teen waved an arm in dismissal. “Oh it was obvious, a massive grimm shows up at my house, seems oddly intelligent, and then randomly appears again at my school miles away in Scotland? You weren't exactly subtle.” Sirius winced, realizing that Harry had a point.

Green eyes locked onto his own, a ferocity in them that made Sirius wonder just who was sitting before him. There was no way this was just a child. “Listen Black, I didn’t know my parents, and I’ve got no real reason to connect with the people they were close to, so I’ve hardly anything from them and don't particularly care-I've made peace with being an orphan and don't intend to wallow in it. Regardless of that though, you are someone that I think I would enjoy having in my life, and you’ve already seen me at some low points, so I think that, as my godfather, you have a responsibility to stay out of trouble for me, considering now that you're legally dead.”

Sirius nodded slowly, letting go of the teen’s wrist and leaning back with a sigh. He had killed Pettigrew already, there was really nothing left for him to do at Hogwarts. There was no shame in leaving and settling in France. He had seen his old bike in Hagrid’s shed a few months prior anyhow, he could probably steal it and fly all the way there if need be.

The snake hissed something, and Harry replied quietly, standing up to leave. “Write to me, alright? And don't be an idiot and die.”

Sirius smiled, watching as the colorful snake weaved through her master’s legs. “I'll try my best.”

* * *

Draco was woken to the sound of the dorm room door opening and closing. Peeking an eye open, he watched as a tall silhouette appeared, a cloak shimmering into view with it.

_ “Harry?” _ He whispered groggily, pushing up onto his elbows as the other boy made his way over through the dark.

_ “I’m here.” _ A cold hand found his cheek, and he leaned into it with a quiet hum.

_ “What were you doing out past curfew?” _

_ “Being mischievous.” _

Draco laughed quietly as a thumb rubbed his cheek soothingly.  _ “Should I be concerned?” _

_ “Well… Are you planning on going to France anytime soon?” _

_ “Not particularly.” _

_ “You'll be fine then.” _

The room dissolved into silence, Blaise had also snuck out in the dead of night, likely to go snog with Greengrass in the common room. Harry’s hand was as chilly as always, and his bed was obnoxiously hot from his own body heat. Draco wondered, distantly, if the other boy would be willing to crawl in and keep him cool.

_ “Harry…” _

_ “Hmm…?” _

Perhaps it was too soon for something like that, he had yet to even admit his feelings completely after all. It wouldn’t be fair to ask something like that without having given all he could to this (relationship? Cautious affection? Merlin, Draco didn't have the faintest clue what they were now) … thing.

_ “... nothing, nevermind. Goodnight.” _

Harry leaned down, and Draco felt the cool forehead bump into his own. Their breath mingled for a moment, before Harry pulled away.

_ “Goodnight.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I think that filled my fluff quota for at least the next seven chapters, let the angst comense!
> 
> Some potentially necessary clarifications: As Sirius and Harry's conversation is through Sirius' eyes, he doesn't know the truth (obviously) so he will believe whatever believable lie Harry throws at him. That is why harry is seen lying through his teeth in several instances and Sirius takes it at face value (and let's be honest: he's off his rocker, it won't take too much for Sirius to believe what Harry is telling him) The timeline goes as follows: Draco and Harry finish their conversation from valentines, and over the next week or so Harry and Narcissa exchange letters, then harry goes out into the woods and gives Sirius the key and returns to the dorm. The next chapter will be more about what happened in that week and the following month or so. Hope this helps any potential confusion!


	66. Gossip, Blackmail, and Flannel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry waits patiently for the right time to act while Draco grapples with his inability to do so, stumbling over cheeky letters and mysterious books as if he were falling from the heavens.  
> Tracey, on the other hand, has discovered the joys of eavesdropping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to post this like two days ago but the entire state of Texas got an abhorrent amount of snow and all of the electricity (and by extension internet) went out and I couldn't even text people much less get online. My house has been below 50 degrees since then so my family was far more focused on not freezing to death (and finding a way to get food when the roads were blocked off and icy and nothing was working). We only just got power and internet back late yesterday night, which is why this chapter is so much later than I planned.

Harry sat before the entrance to the chamber of secrets in his mindscape, chewing on his lip in thought as the wendigo stood watch before him. It had been quite the shock when he had finally managed to mosey down there only to find the blasted thing guarding the door between him and Tom, growling aggressively and refusing to budge. Harry had watched for a time before creeping closer, and now sat (quite unproductively) on the floor a meter or two away, attempting to figure out just what the wendigo was trying to do. He had been planning on freeing Tom from his mental prison, but was finding that he would be having little luck in that department, as his demon seemed insistent on keeping the two of them separate.

“This is counterproductive, you know.” He was sitting cross legged on the cold stone, his body leaned back and resting on his hands as he looked up at the massive creature. It made an incomprehensible noise, something between a screech and a hiss which made his bones shake. Harry could almost comprehend words among the hissing, but not quite, as if the wendigo was attempting to communicate with parseltongue but didn't understand the language. 

“You must have some sort of ulterior motive besides being a nuisance. If you told me what’s wrong I might be able to help.” No answer. He sighed, unraveling his legs and letting them flay out in front of him, his steel-toed boots barely brushing against the hooves of his demon. It wasn't that Tom seemed all that stifled in his confindes-though he was no doubt going insane all on his own-it was just that Harry needed to speak with the man about what all had happened during the past several months, and it was impossible to do that if Tom was very clearly not allowed out.

“Look, how about you let me go in for say-merlin I don't know-fifteen minutes. Would that be fine?”

No answer.

Harry groaned, letting his elbows buckle as he fell backwards with a soft  _ thunk  _ against the cool stone below him. This was obviously going nowhere, the wendigo was holding firm about it’s distrust of Tom (or perhaps its need to be annoying), and would likely never yield to his prodding. At the rate this was going, by the time he even managed to weedle out a response it would be daytime and he would have to go back to the school. Sneaking out to the Forbidden Forest to meditate under the careful eyes of the centaur clan was easy enough with an invisibility cloak in the dead of night, but during the day even the occasional brush of wind could make his position known to anyone who happened to glance past where he walked. A pair of legs standing alone from a body were always cause of alarm.

There was a quiet rumble from the beast before him, and Harry looked up to find it pressing a spindly hand on the door, glowing eyes boring into him as if answering a question. He looked closer, observing as bloodied claws scratched at the metal softly, just barely enough to cause a physical imperfection in the metalwork.

“Use your words.”

The rumbling growl shifted into something akin to a hiss, and Harry slowly rose from his lying position, peering at the door with narrowed eyes. The hiss sounded… unfriendly, nothing at all like the slow drawl of Tom’s accent when he spoke the language of snakes or Thasin’s melodious tone of voice. It seemed familiar though, familiar enough to send bolts of caution through him.

_ Is that… Voldemort? _

“Is Tom getting up to something dangerous with the horcruxes in there?” It was a question to himself just as much to the wendigo, who purred with satisfaction. Settling back on his haunches, Harry observed the door in a new light. Tom was constantly talking with his horcruxes, attempting to pull them onto the ‘right side’ or some such tosh. It was likely that several (if not all of them) were just as megalomaniacal as Voldemort had been at his prime, if not worse. The wendigo had never seemed all that concerned about it before now, so Harry could only assume that Tom was messing with one of the more…  _ temperamental _ soul shards.

“You'll tell me if it's safe to go in there, yes? The second he stops all that nonsense you’ll let me pass so I can speak with him.” There was another satisfied purr, and Harry stood, nodding to himself in thought. There would be no way to get to Tom until whatever nonsense he’d gotten up to was over and done with, so there was no use trying till then. Eyeing his wendigo with mild distrust, Harry started backing away from the beast with careful footfalls. They were on good ground now-at least he thought so-and had more or less left each other alone, but both of them knew that the wendigo would pounce on him the second his back was turned.

His foot hit the bottom step, and Harry began walking backwards up the narrow stairs and out of sight, turning once he was sure he was far away enough to not warrant an attack. Speeding up to a jog, Harry began to quickly ascend back into his own mind, thoughts of horcruxes and foolhardy slytherins racing through his head.

* * *

**Mother,**

**I know you and Harry have been gossiping about me-and don't you try to deny it, I found the letters on his desk. I ask that you withhold from any further conversation with him that may potentially lead to my future embarrassment. Furthermore, if you would exercise caution when conversing with my friend on matters that involve me, I would be eternally grateful.**

**Now onto the subject which has spurred on this letter: I am reaching a point in my life where I believe that an understanding of all types of traditional courting rituals should be well known to me. For that, I would like to request your personal opinion on the history of same-sex courting rituals, for perfectly educational purposes. It is my understanding that they are rather intricate and differ widely from the more traditional relationship.**

**Your son, Draco.**

**P.S. Please send more pepper imps, the last care package was in worryingly low supply of them.**

**~**

**Dragon of mine,**

**I have no doubt that you believe that I would have so little tact as to ‘gossip’ with one of your dear friends, but believe me when I say that the conversations me and Mr. Potter had were in regards to the Black family and had only mere passing mentions of you. As it is, I will retaliate for your rudeness by sending Mr. Potter some of your baby photos. I hope you can live with your penance.**

**While your attempts at subtly continue to be rather poor, much to me and your father’s continued amusement, I would be more than happy to send you a book on the subject of courting rituals for non-traditional marriages. That being said, I must impress on you that you and Mr. Potter are far from such a conversation and I ask that you not ‘jump the gun’ as muggles would say.**

**Hugs and Kisses, XOXO Mum.**

**P.S. No.**

**~**

**Mother,**

**You, quite literally, run a gossip club with other Ladies of the Wizengamot. It is not only a bold faced lie but also a** **_crime_ ** **for you to say something so blatantly incorrect as to insinuate that you are NOT a gossiping madwoman. Furthermore, if you send Harry any photos of the time before I understood the necessity and art of posing, I will fly myself to the Manor and tell you exactly how I feel about it to your face, Hogwarts wards be damned.**

**While I appreciate your enthusiasm, mother, I must repeat that this is perfectly academic interest and that me and Harry could hardly be considered anything but friends in the current climate. Again, I thank you for the book, even if I doubt that I will use it for anything besides ACADEMIC INTERESTS. I repeat: academic interests. I have no intentions of considering the ins and outs of the magical processes of a non-traditional marriage for the potential of my own future marriage.**

**Draco.**

**P.S. Please?**

**~**

**Dragon,**

**I would hardly consider my bookclub anything gossip-related in the slightest, and I am quite insulted that you would insinuate something so vile. As it is, I am afraid that I have already sent Mr. Potter a copy of every photo I have of your first five years, so your threats are too little, too late. Don’t worry, he promised not to show anyone.**

**See here young man, you can hardly be considered anything if not an awful hypocrite for so blatantly and aggressively insinuating that I am a liar, when you have so clearly done nothing but lie to yourself in regards to your ‘academic interests’. As it stands, I have neither the heart nor soul to argue with you further, as I gain nothing from it but unnecessary stress and a rather prominent headache.That being said, as I am your mother and I love you, I will find it in myself to forgive your various and rather amusing transgressions.**

**Love, Mum.**

**P.S. No one likes a whiner.**

Draco glared down at the letter, a severe blush staining his cheeks as he read its contents for the fifth time. The voluptuous Lady Malfoy was nothing if not a horrid gossip, and he had no doubt that she had had him all figured out months prior to their brief exchange of letters-likely over yule break. He looked down at the large tome she had sent with her last letter, and promptly shoved it in his trunk to be read when the others were nowhere in sight.

“Bad news?”

Jumping in his seat, Draco whipped around to find Harry closing the dorm room door behind him with a quiet click. He watched, humming in quiet response as the tall boy shrugged off his outer-shirt with an absent-minded air, obviously thinking of other things despite his question. The school year was notable in how forgettable classes were, with days and weeks between excitement blurring together in a mix of essays and strange looks from Professor Lupin. It was very odd to Draco, as the man seemed relatively normal most of the time-if a little sickly-but stared at Harry as if he was the next coming of merlin. Sadly for the professor, Harry seemed to despise him with a ferocity that was uncommon for the usually relaxed and impartial boy.

Draco realized, belatedly, that he had yet to reply to the casual proding. “My mother simply sees it fit to make me suffer on occasion.” He supplied, setting the letter to the side of his desk with a look of disdain.

Harry nodded distractedly at the answer, pulling off his undershirt and giving Draco full view of his back, as well as the reddened flesh of his left shoulder. Draco made an effort not to wince, knowing that Harry had been making a conscious effort to change in the baths, away from where Draco could see the wound he had caused-likely for his peace of mind, knowing Harry.

“Mothers are like that, from what I've heard.” The tall boy pulled on a thin muggle tank top, which was so threadbare it was practically translucent, with the sides mere strings of fabric clinging desperately to his waist. It was a near polar opposite to the magically tailored undershirt Draco wore currently, which exposed his wings but not much else, and was a  _ much  _ thicker material. Draco gulped audibly, double checking to make sure the blasted book was well and truly out of sight. He turned back to Harry, attempting to get the conversation onto something that didn't involve impossibly thin shirts and surprisingly defined stomach muscles.

“You seem more tired than usual, has something happened?” He winced when his voice cracked, though the other boy didn't seem to notice it.  _ Thank merlin.  _ Harry shrugged on a muggle flannel, which did quite a bit more to cover up his sides but still left Draco with a full view of his chest and… stomach through the near-translucent fabric. He cursed his hormones for the millionth time and turned back to his desk, fumbling around for something to occupy himself with as Harry fell onto  _ Draco’s _ bed with a sigh.

“I’ve been attempting to figure out a mystery that has been puzzling me for the better half of the past year. But progress has moved from a slow crawl to nothing but theories and educated guesses and I'm getting rather frustrated with the whole thing.”

Draco hummed quietly, uninterested. Harry had new mysteries to solve every other Tuesday it seemed, this was hardly special. “What is it?”

“A potion I invented but can't figure out the use of.”

Draco turned towards the bed, interested. Harry hadn’t invented a potion before, it was reasonable to be excited by the prospect. “You invented a potion?”

The taller boy pursed his lips, leaning back into the feather pillows and no doubt getting his distinctive scent all over Draco’s sheets. The blond pulled a face, watching as his perfectly made bed was frumpled beyond repair. It would be a nightmare trying to sleep that night if all he could smell was brimstone and smoke, and he would no doubt get so uncomfortably hot from the agitation and loneliness that he would end up casting a freezing charm on the mattress again. Draco frowned, watching as Harry continued to get comfortable, stretching out like a cat and showing off his obnoxious and steadily increasing height to the ever-stunted boy.

“I've invented two, though one of them is most certainly a highly dangerous poison. So-not truly something with magical qualities... besides gifting someone the magical ability to perform professional murder, I suppose.”

“And the other?”

Harry grunted, shifting as he reached into his trouser pocket to pull out a vial of golden liquid. “It looks exactly like felix felicis, but if it's anything similar, the effects are far more subdued.”

Draco took the vial happily, turning it this way and that to observe how it shimmered in the light, cataloguing it’s features with thinly veiled fascination. From the descriptions he had read of felix felicis-which was said to have a golden and opaque hue-the potion he held could most certainly be a rather nice example of liquid luck.

That didn’t mean it was though.

“What did you make this thing from?”

Harry messed up his hair, looking unbelievably cozy and extremely huggable. Draco made an effort to not crawl in bed and see just how comfortable that flannel was. “Freely given Unicorn hair and basilisk venom, combined into a solute of purified water and african sea salt.”

Draco blinked, staring down at Harry with something akin to shock. “And where-pray tell-did you get freely given unicorn hair of all things?”

Harry grinned, staring off at the middle distance as Draco attempted to catch his gaze. “Gemma Farley owed me a favor.”

Draco groaned, rolling his eyes and returning his gaze to the potion. It was well known in Slytherin how the Farley family had been pandering to Harry all of the prior year, it made perfect sense that their eldest daughter had needed to do him a few favors. The potion was a similar-if identical-consistency and color to felix felicis, so it was likely that it was related in some way. However, the simplicity of the potion set him on edge, as something that easy to make (even if the ingredients are obnoxiously rare) clashed rather heavily with liquid luck’s six month brewing time.

He hummed, twirling the vial around in thought. Unicorn hair was well known for its healing properties, as well as its faithfulness; his wand, for instance, had a unicorn hair core, and Ollivander had noted that it would be extremely faithful to him due to that very reason. That was to say, combined with the basilisk venom, there was really no telling what the hair would do.

“Can you describe how the potion is made?”

Harry nodded, “I mix the solute and basilisk venom together before adding the proper amount of hair. Once that is done, the hair will fizzle and dissolve into the solution, and I have to stir it into the entire thing as it does so to gain the proper consistency.”

Draco hummed again, running the properties of basilisk venom through his mind. The venom was something so potent that a bezoar could not save someone from death if they were to be bitten, and was generally considered the most effective way to kill someone by snake bite. However, to say that it was the perfect poison would be foolhardy, as it would have to be injected into the bloodstream to be of much use in killing someone. Snake venom was unable to survive in most animal’s stomach acid, and if it was-well, the body likely wouldn't absorb it anyway. What ended up happening was that the toxins would either dissolve or pass right through, though there were some cases of snake venom being harmful if ingested.

“Are you injecting it into the body to test, or are you having creatures ingest it?”

Harry blinked, “wot?”

“Well since the basilisk venom is a venom and not a poison, it needs to be injected to be fully effective.”

He blinked again, before slapping himself on the forehead and groaning. “MERLIN I'm an idiot.”

Draco sniffed, handing back over the vial as Harry grabbed for it. “Hardly, not many people consider the venom of a snake to be anything but poisonous when ingested. However, since snakes evolved fangs to bite things and not little cups to politely feed their venom to prey, it is safe to say that stomach acid gets in the way of these sorts of things.”

Harry made a face, pocketing the vial as he shifted on the bed, long legs dangling off the side as he attempted to take up as much space as possible. “I can't believe I didn't realize that, I  _ literally _ have a pet snake.”

Draco rolled his eyes, turning back to his desk and pushing things around in an effort not to fidget. “You can't be a genius all the time.”

There was movement behind him, and Harry hopped off his bed to stand behind Draco’s desk, peering over his shoulder to watch the impromptu tiding. “I can still be a genius while not knowing everything about everything that has ever existed.”

“Doubtful.”

Harry leaned over him, observing how a blush began crawling up his pale neck. “Hmmm… I suppose that makes you an idiot then, eh? Mr. fourth in year.”

Draco frowned rather aggressively, turning around and glaring at a cheekily grinning Harry. “I’m sorry, don't you have a potentially lethal potion to test on innocent subjects?”

Harry rolled his eyes, turning away as his flannel slipped off his undamaged shoulder and pooled around his elbow. “Fine fine, I know a dismissal when I hear it.”

He sighed, setting down the uncut quill he had been fiddling with. “Don't be such a drama queen Potter, you obviously want something.”

Harry idled for a moment, staring blankly at Blaise’s bed as if it held some sort of knowledge of the future. “I was just... wondering if you’ve thought about it.”

“Thought about what?”

“Love.”

Draco made a conscious effort to breath, looking down at the floor as pink dusted across his cheeks.

_ “I-I fancy you… I suppose.” _

_ Harry raised an eyebrow, “you suppose?” _

_ He huffed, “listen here Potter, I need far longer than the three minutes you’ve allotted me to consider the ins and outs of my own personal affection for you, and even longer than that to decide conclusively if that is, indeed, love.” _

_ The excited gleam in Harry’s eyes returned, “but there is affection there, yes? You do fancy me?” _

After that conversation, Harry had asked him to think about it-just to think about where his emotions fell on the ‘love’ spectrum. Draco had only needed about an hour to sort himself in the ‘utterly enamored’ category, but-as Harry had said that day-he was horrendous at any kind of verbal affection and was rather pants at admitting to that affection as well.

“I-I have, yes.”

“...and?”

Draco glanced to where the tome his mother sent him was hidden, and then to his bookshelf where the book on soulmates was sitting, unopened and unread. He knew how he felt, and what he wanted, but had no idea what the future of that decision could hold.

“-and I would like to ask for another month before giving my answer.”

Harry laughed quietly, head tilted in thought. “I'm not giving you a time limit Dray, take as long as you need.”

He didn't want to. Truthfully, Draco would be perfectly content to simply fall into Harry’s chilly embrace and stay there till his skin began to rot, but he knew that the tall teen deserved more of an answer than that. Draco needed time to figure all the angles-to understand what life could be like after Hogwarts for them.

He wanted this, but he also wanted it to last.

“Just a month-how about April twenty-fifth. I'll tell you then.”

Harry bobbed his head yes, and said something about needing to test the potion, before he meandered out of the room, awkwardly pulling the fallen sleeve back up onto his shoulder as he did. Draco watched him go with a feeling of quiet regret, wishing that he was better at this-wishing that he was as assured in his emotions as Harry seemed to be.

Sighing, he stood, reaching for the soulmate book on his shelf and setting it onto his desk. It was about time he figured out what Harry was trying to say with the blasted thing anyhow, there had to be a hidden meaning-a cheeky code of some sort perhaps? Reaching down for the hidden tome buried in his trunk, Draco set it down next to the newer book on his desk and sighed, trying to figure out which one he should read first. Making a decision quick enough, he opened to the first page of his Christmas gift and began to read.

* * *

Tracey watched as Pansy Parkinson rounded the bend, a pleased smile painted across her face as she practically skipped down the hall. Catching her eyes, the shorter girl gave Tracey a wink, holding up a familiar moleskine notebook for her to see. Tracey was leaning lazily against the brick wall, and motioned the girl over with one hand as she bit into a pumpkin pastie.

“What is it?”

Pansy’s smile widened, and she flounced over to where Tracey stood with poorly hidden glee. “You wouldn't believe what the Gryffindorks are talking about!” 

Tracey raised an eyebrow, still chewing the pumpkin pasty and not to speak with her mouth full. While in first and second year the two of them had gotten along about as well as a fish did with open air, they had eventually succumbed to something of a truce in the earlier days of the school year. It had been a quiet year for both of them, and as Daphne became more and more engrossed in the boys’ nonsense, Tracey had gone off in search of something to spend her time doing.

That thing, apparently, had ended up being blackmail.

It hadn't started out her intention, but as Tracey wasted away in the library one day in search of Theo or perhaps something interesting to read, she had come upon Parkinson with her ear pressed up against the side of a shelf. When she was about to ask the crazy bint what she was on about, she had been very quietly shushed and motioned over conspiratorially. Apparently, Pansy had been listening in on a rather nasty breakup between one of the seventh years and a rather presumptuous student aid who had graduated two years prior. Messy business, and-as the snooty girl noted-perfect for blackmail. Pansy had written the entire exchange down in a little book with the date and time and had dragged her off, explaining in a hushed whisper that she would stomp Tracey into the dirt if she said a word about the blackmail book. Tracey had, of course, been immediately intrigued by the practice, and asked if she could help gather information in her offtime. As the days dragged on however, and classes loomed like a beacon of constant boredom, the occasional eavesdropping had quickly dissolved in the two of them sneaking about and listening in on private conversations near-constantly. Tracey had even gone to the extent of learning the disillusionment spell a few years early after Harry refused to let her borrow his invisibility cloak, wishing for an alternative to crouching in alcoves or peering around bookshelves.

She rolled her eyes at the shorter girl, grabbing for the little notebook as Pansy danced out of reach, giggling with glee. “They're always talking about something Pans. Now spill!”

The book was placed primly in her outstretched palm, and the giddy gossip of a girl began to explain. “Well, apparently Granger’s parents found out about her lack of a left leg, and wrote quite the scathing letter to the Headmaster about how they weren’t being notified of such a  _ grievous  _ injury. Muggles can be awfully prickly about that sort of thing apparently. Anyway, from the way Granger’s been sobbing about it all day long, it seems they've decided to pull her from Hogwarts once the school year is over and enroll her in Beauxbatons!”

Tracey’s eyebrows climbed to her hairline in surprise as Pansy squealed happily, obviously ecstatic about the news. “I suppose Gryffindor won't be in the running for the house cup after this year then? What with Granger being shipped off to France.”

She peaked open the notebook, flipping through the pages as Pansy replied. “Oh I'm sure we’ll flounce them once that bitch is out of the way, what with Potter and Nott in our house.”

Some of the newer pages were filled with Tracey’s own chicken scratch, detailing all manner of things ranging from which teachers are seen together the most to who was caught in a broom closet with who. Pansy made a ‘gimme’ motion with her hand, and Tracey dutifully handed it back to the girl, trying to remember when the next hogsmeade weekend was so she could get one for herself.

“Well either way, should we tell anyone? This is a big deal-for our year group especially.” Pansy pursed her lips, seeming to think on it for a moment as she slapped a rhythmic beat into her hip with the notebook.

“Hmmm… nope! At least not for now, it's way more fun to watch Granger have a meltdown about getting pulled from school when everyone just thinks she's just being a brat. If they knew the truth quite a few would be sympathetic. Besides, Gryffindors can't keep their mouths shut! The news will be out by the end of the month at the latest-if she's lucky.”

Tracey took the final bite of her pastry, dusting the crumbs off her fingers as Pansy shoved the book into her skirt pocket. “Still, we should at least tell the other slytherins.”

Her friend whined, stomping her foot like a child while Tracey shorted in amusement. “But half of those idiots don't know how to keep a secret! I want to watch Granger stew in her anger for a few weeks without them making her more indignant than she has to be.”

Tracey laughed, moving from the wall and down towards the common room, Pansy following next to her. “Only you would bother with the nuances of different types of frustration. What does it matter if she's indignant or pissy?”

Pansy looped her arm around Tracey’s, pulling her down the hallway at a faster pace as she continued to chatter incessantly. “I know you're uncultured Davis, but even you should understand the delight of watching someone stew in their anger instead of lashing out against the perpetrators. She has nowhere to place her frustrations if her upset is pointed towards her parents in England!”

Laughing lightly, Tracey let herself get tugged along. “You're a sadist, you know that?”

Pansy’s head whipped around, single eyebrow raised and lips pursed in a smile. “Sadism is my best feature.”

“Or your worst.”

“Says the simple peasant to a radiant goddess.”

Tracey didn't get to respond as she was suddenly yanked into an alcove, nearly shouting out as Pansy’s hand slapped over her mouth.

“Mpfm-!”

“Shhh!”

Voices filtered down the hall, the sounds of two girls speaking quickly back and forth as a boy input his own opinion occasionally.

“It just isn't  _ fair!  _ Mum said it would work-”

“But it didn’t. Don't you think that-”

“Shut UP Ronald! Anyway, mum  _ promised _ that he would love me after eating anything with the potion in it, but he still avoids me like the plague!”

Tracey pressed further into the alcove, shoving closer to Pansy in an effort to stay as far out of sight as she could manage. Pansy, on the other hand, started grabbing for her notebook and a quill.

“Well perhaps he didn't eat them? You don't know if Potter even likes fudge, he might have taken them to spare your feelings then thrown them away.”

Tracey sucked in a breath, grabbing for her wand to cast a disillusionment charm-just to be on the safe side.  _ Bloody hell, someone’s trying to drug Harry with a potion? _

She cast the spell just in time, as the distinctive forms of two Weasleys and the limping Hermione Granger came into view. Granger, despite getting a magical replacement for her missing leg, still limped rather noticeably, as she was not fully adapted to the prosthetic. 

“I don't know, he looked awfully interested in them, perhaps the dose wasn't strong enough?”

“I duno Gin, amortentia is pretty potent, right?”

Scrambling to stop Pansy from ripping out of her grasp to pummel the three, Tracey attempted to get her rising anger under control as well.  _ Amortentia! They're trying to commit bloody line theft! _

“Oh what do you know about potions Ron, maybe it's just because he's so tall?”

“Well what's that got to do with it?”

There was the telltale sound of Granger huffing, “honestly! It's just like alcohol, the bigger you are the more area the potion has to run through. Since he's so tall for our age, it may be likely that the potion was too spread out to be effective.”

“Ohhh… So I should try again?”

Pansy had stopped struggling, and was now furiously writing in her notebook, the scratch of her quill just barely quiet enough to go unnoticed by the three Gryffindors.

“It would be for the best. Though… you should try using something that isn't fudge next time, he might get suspicious.”

At that point, their voices faded from hearing distance, and Pansy shoved out of her hold, stomping out into the open like an angry bull. “The nerve! I don’t even like Potter that much but that was just-the utter idiocy-that was attempted line theft! I can’t even comprehend how someone-the utter-how could someone of pure blood sink so low!”

_ “Attempting _ line theft, Pans, they're going to try it again.”

Pansy stopped her angry pacing, standing rim-rod straight as the gears started turning in her mind. Quick as a bullet, she turned and darted off down the hall.

“Pansy wait-!” Running after her friend, Tracey reached out and nabbed her arm, groaning at the girl’s angry look. “What are you doing?”

Pansy’s eyes were blazing with righteous fury, the pure-blood standards of tact she had been raised to acknowledge and structure her life around bleeding through her base instincts. “What do you mean ‘what am I doing’ we have to tell Potter! He may have weaseled out of their first attempt but he might not be as lucky the second time.”

Tracey sighed, “Harry’s a big boy, he can sort himself out. As it is, I doubt he would have passed up the opportunity to eat something unless he knew it was drugged, and since he isn’t under the effects of amortentia it’s safe to say he probably already knows and just doesn’t care.” Tugging at the girls sleeve, Tracey started pulling her along in the direction the trio went, an excited gleam in her eye as she spoke. “Now come on, I want to see what else they’re getting up to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed you all ;-; my back is healed enough to write this chapter, but chapters for the next week or so will still be a tad sporadic (a chapter every two or three days probably, I'm still resting so... ya know). Hopefully, after the next week the only breaks from this fic I will be taking in the future will be for my own relaxation and not because I absolutely wrecked my lower back muscles.


	67. A Father's Senselessness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron Weasley fashions himself into someone who could hardly be considered a fool, toeing the line between what he had been taught and what he had learned. Sirius, on the other hand, learns a valuable lesson about family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that the spell tempus is actually a fan-made spell, and isn’t actually canon? I lost my shit reading about that personally, how did something like that become so widespread that people just assumed it was canon? (Or does everyone already know all that and I'm just a big idiot).

Hermione Granger was hardly an idiot. In fact, she could be considered quite the genius herself, and would no doubt be well respected and admired if she ever managed ever got her head out of her own arse. Ron grumbled from where he walked behind the girl and his sister, watching how his friend limped down the hall at a steady pace. He wasn't an idiot either, though it seemed like everyone liked to think he was, looking down on him like he was hardly worth the trouble. They were all morons really, running around like headless chickens while Ron was right there, waiting for someone to realize how crucial to the team he truly was. Ron prided himself on having quite a bit more sense than the people around him, as it seemed that everyone he knew was obsessed with jumping right into crazy plots and  _ very _ sketchy conspiracies, never considering that it might be beneficial to sit down and think over what they were about to do. Perhaps it was the chess player in him, but Ron rather enjoyed planning out his moves five steps ahead.

“It would be for the best. Though… you should try using something that isn't fudge next time, he might get suspicious.” Ron rolled his eyes, only half listening in on the conversation as he was led through the halls. It seemed counterproductive to try and get Potter to love his sister; he was a snake after all, having him love Ginny wouldn't change how much of a ponce he was. Ron thought that it would be much simpler to just get the fucker expelled and his wand snapped, so they wouldn't have to worry about him hexing their bits off if a plan went wrong. Truthfully, he was certain he would have managed it if Hermione and the headmaster weren’t so aggressively against the idea. 

In truth, Potter wasn’t nearly as much of a headache for Ron as Malfoy was, and seemed content to leave everyone well enough alone if they did the same. If the headmaster was worried about anyone becoming the next dark lord, he should have his sights pinned to Malfoy. However, neither the headmaster nor Hermione cared much about what Ron said, so the two of them were still running around trying to come up with some sort of plan to get Potter on their side and away from the dark. It only got worse once Ginny joined the fray, as she seemed to focus entirely on the fantastical dream of having Potter as her beau. For some inconceivable reason, the chit believed that Potter couldn't be anything but the ideal husband, and set out to make it happen, no matter who told her it was a stupid idea. Oddly enough, their mum seemed to agree with her, and the girl was spurred on by Molly Weasley’s hand.

“What could I even use besides fudge though? I only managed to get the blasted things to him because it was Christmas and there were only ten or so students at school!” His sister’s whining broke through his thoughts, and Ron groaned in annoyance.

“Oh come on Gin, just tell the house elfs to put it in his food or something, they have to do anything that you ask them to do anyway.” He had taken advantage of the elfs’ loyalty ever since the headmaster told him the little buggers would do whatever he asked, and while Ron had been mostly using them to take weekend meals in bed, there were many other ways to take advantage of the privilege. 

Ginny and Hermione both seemed surprised that he had a good idea, and bent their heads together to whisper about it. He grumbled at the dismissive attitudes, used to the two looking down on him but still quite bothered by it. What would it take for him to get noticed for all he did for those two-for all he did in the name of the light?

Ron stopped suddenly, head tilted to the side as he listened for the footsteps he was certain he had just heard. If someone listened in on the two girls talking about amortentia, all three of them could get in a world of trouble, even if the headmaster tried to help them out of it.

“Ron, what are you doing?” Hermione’s voice took on a shrill undertone, her unsteady footfalls stopping as she turned to look at him. He ignored her, walking back the way they came and peering down the hall. There was no one there, but that didn't mean that no one had been listening in. His eyes narrowed, there were a lot of empty classrooms in that hall that someone could have darted into.

“Ron!” 

“... Coming.”

If someone really was listening in and reported them, he could always beg off as being an innocent bystander and get off with milder consequences than his sister and friend. Sure, it wasn't very honorable, but Hermione had a few screws loose and was a right bitch lately and Ginny had always been a brat. If they got caught, it was their own fault for not listening to him.

As the three walked away, the disillusioned forms of Pansy Parkinson and Tracey Davis let out identical sighs of relief.

* * *

It was a new moon when Sirius finally got it in himself to escape to France. He knew that, logically, it would be much harder to drive his motorbike when there was so little light for him to see with, but it would also be much harder for people to see him in the dead of night, so it was a safety measure as much as it was a danger. Truthfully, he had spent so long as Padfoot that his normal, human eyes allowed him to see at night much better than your typical wizard could, so he hoped that that slight advantage would put him ahead of any patrolling teachers.

Creeping through the underbrush, Padfoot came upon the treeline of the forbidden forest, eyes gleaming in the near-abyssal darkness. Sniffing the air, he took off in a fast jog towards Hagrid’s hut, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be patrolling the grounds. The wind was howling, which did a good job to mask any sounds he made, but would also make flying just that much more difficult. Coming to a stop around the back of the hut, Sirius shifted back into human form, keeping crouched as he crept along towards the back of the hut. He had seen the bike out of sheer luck one day, prowling around as Padfoot when he came upon the poor thing. It was gathering vines and dirt in a small field behind the hut, its once polished paint chipped and some-what rusted as pixies made a nest in the muffler. His foot hit something metal, and he grabbed around for the vague outline of his bike, cussing lightly as one of the pixies bit his finger.

“Little shites, come here you.” Grabbing the pixie by its wings, he made quick work of the nest, shooing the little fuckers off as he did.

“Merlin… does Hagrid not know what bike maintenance is?” The bike would probably work just fine if it was nothing but a motor and handlebars, but really, what was the purpose of having a flying motorbike if not to look badass? Pulling the rusted bike from the dirt, Sirius yanked off as much of the vines and underbrush as he could before slowly pushing it out of the field, trying to get as far away from the hut as he could before taking off. It wouldn't do to alert Hagrid to his midnight escape.

Hopping onto the torn seat, Sirius glanced behind him again to check that there was still no one around, before turning the key. The motor shuttered for a moment, struggling to get moving as he whispered quiet pleas under his breath. There was something akin to a whine, before a shuttering bang, and the bike jumped into action, the motor purring back to life as he thanked merlin, morgana, and every god on earth.

He breathed out a quiet breath, patting the slowly filling fuel tank, brushing a dirty hand over the once-shiny finish. “That's it baby, just like butter. Alright now, let's get the ‘ell out of here.”

The bike was, obviously, enchanted to the gills in order to fly, but there were also a lot of fuel-related charms on it that Lily had helped him create. The entire thing basically worked by fueling itself off of his own ambient magic, and was especially attuned to his specific signature, so only he could keep it running for an extended period of time. Not only did that make it just that much more personal, but it would stop working once the tank was empty of his stored up magic, which was likely why Hagrid had left it to rot-it just ran out of the trace amounts of his magic to use as fuel. Hagrid probably just left it in the field after it stopped working, you couldn't do much of anything with a bike that refused to run after all. Grunting slightly, Sirius closed his eyes, feeling for his core and pulling the magic out of him and into the surrounding air. It was risky, since there was a chance the bike wouldn’t take in all of the magic, and someone might be able to cast a detection spell on the area and find out that he had been there. Sadly though, he was on a bit of a schedule, and it was the quickest method he knew to power the motorbike. Luckily for him, the bike greedily sucked up all the magic it could, and he could feel it wake up from its decade long slumber quick enough to be considered excited.

Pressing down on the gas, Sirius felt the bike silently creep forward, rusted wheels somehow not fighting the movement in the slightest-as if it knew he needed it to be quiet. Taking a cautious breath, he pressed down harder, and felt the telltale sign of his bike slowly lifting off the ground, gravity fighting with little avail to pull him back to the earth. 

Flooring it, Sirius made a conservative effort not to whoop with glee as he shot off into the sky, the invisible moon doing nothing to alert the people below to his newfound freedom. Wind whipping through his hair, Sirius searched for the train tracks that would lead him back to London in the low light, his eyes straining despite his superior sight.

“Come on… Come on... Shite, where is it.”

Wiping his head around, he searched for Hogsmeade instead, finding to his relief that he could spot the distant lights of the small town from where he was flying over the forest. Angling his bike in the right direction, Sirius settled in for a long trip, wind fighting his every move and creeping feelings of magical exhaustion slowly dawning on the horizon as his bike continued to sap magic from him.

“The things I do for you, Harry.”

* * *

As Sirius Black soared through the sky, his trajectory pointing him on the shortest path to London, Harry Potter neglected his sleep, his brain occupied by the ever-increasing pile of mysteries that had befallen him. Instead of lying in his warm, cozy bed, he was tinkering away in the library of secrets, trying to figure out how the hell needles worked with little luck.

“Stupid bloody thing.” Truthfully, Harry had never found much need for needles, as his only experience with them were with various shots in the muggle world, and he had yet to wield a medical syringe himself. He had never even considered that there might be things magical people needed to inject, as potions were always (to his knowledge) taken orally, but he found with surprise that St. Mungo's had a wide array of syringes used to inject specific potions into patents. Luckily for him, Harry managed to find a seller that would give him some used ones on the condition that he didn't tell anybody where he got them. At first he had sniffed at the idea of using used syringes, but as he was going to be testing the potion on common rats first and not people (at least, not for now) he decided (begrudgingly) that typical medical practices could be discarded in the pursuit of science.

_ “~Are you sure that is how you use those?~” _

Jörmungandr peered over his shoulder, being very unhelpful and generally quite sarcastic as Harry struggled with the stupid things. He grunted in response, twisting the handle a weird direction and- “aha!” shouting in victory as the steel plunger began to suck the golden potion up into the barrel. It had taken some prodding with his magic to get the blasted thing to start working as it should, as the woman who sold them to him seemed content in not sending any sort of instructions as well, but it seemed as though he had managed it regardless.

Turning to  Jörmungandr, he held up the syringe smuggly, which was now filled to the brim with opaque, golden liquid.  _ “~Ready to torture some mice?~” _

If snakes could roll their eyes, Jörmungandr just made a rather good attempt at it.  _ “~I suppose.~” _

_ “~You're a snake Jör, shouldn't the pain of rodents be good fun for you?~” _

_ “~Mice are nothing but stir fry to the king of snakes.~” _

_ “~Sure.~” _

Settling down in his desk chair, Harry observed three mice scamper around the inside of the conjured cage he had set up. They all looked the exact same, with the only noticeable difference between them being subtle coloring in their fur. Picking at random, Harry levitated one up and out of the cage, holding it steady in the air as he watched the syringe get to work. It was fascinating to see the enchantments typically used for self-writing quills be altered to function with the syringes, as Harry never really expected wix to be capable of such creativity. In the end though, magical society prided itself in coming up with the easiest way to manage something, so it shouldn't have been that much of a shock.

The needle of the syringe entered the squirming rat with a well-practiced precision that Harry was positive he did not personally possess, and he watched with interest as a small amount of the potion was squeezed into the creature, making the poor thing shiver as it took effect. The needle was removed, and Harry levitated the rat down onto his desk, observing it carefully with his hand poised to jolt down any notes.

At first, nothing seemed to happen, as the mouse shook itself off and started wandering around the table, sniffing at papers and generally acting as a rodent should. However, it began to show signs of anxiety after a few moments, seeming jittery and unsure as it scampered around, not very assured in its movements and cautious of every little thing. Harry observed for several minutes, watching how the feelings of unease seemed to double, till the mouse curled up in a little ball and refused to move, its tail wrapped around its shivering form.

Harry hummed, intrigued if slightly perturbed.

_ “~What do you think?~” _

Jörmungandr tasted the air, peering down at the conjured rat with pity.  _ “~It is terrified, please kill it.~” _

He didn’t though, watching as the little mouse quivered like a leaf in a hurricane, wondering just what this reaction could mean. Obviously, the potion seemed to mainly target emotions in some form, which meant that it might have some sort of potential in the field of mental torture, in the very least. He squinted, peering down at the immobile creature as if it could answer all of his questions. He never had much of a need to torture people, generally finding it unsavory unless well deserving. He knew quite a few people might benefit from that kind of a potion, as it could provide a suitable way of torturing someone without the pesky problem of them eventually bleeding out, but he still was unsure if these results were simply a reaction to physical effects or was the potion’s intended result. Regardless, emotions were finicky at best, so there was a looming possibility that the potion’s effects could show themselves differently in humans than it did in mice.

Picking up a quill, Harry hastily scribbled down a few notes about the first mouse before casting a cutting curse at its neck, severing the spinal cord and instantly killing it. With another swish of the elder wand, he banished all blood from the corpse and what else that had leaked onto his desk, watching as the poor thing shriveled up, skin sticking to the bone with the loss of moisture.

He then flexed his fingers, waiting a moment before whispering in an unknowable language to the mouse, moving his wand in a counter-clockwise motion as the wound was sutured shut and the mouse’s heart began to beat again. It was still for several minutes, blood slowly beginning to return into the shriveled body as he continued to coax the mouse’s soul back to the land of the living. The tail twitched, and suddenly the little creature jerked upwards with life, scampering up and shooting like a rocket towards the edge of the table, hitting the mouse-keyed wards he had set up around the table and flying back with a quiet thump against the table. It got up, and started wandering around as if nothing had happened.

“Hm.”

It didn't seem to be under the potion's effects any longer, so the potion was likely more centralized into the bloodstream… or he just hadn’t waited long enough for the potion to spread through the entire body. Grabbing the still quite full syringe off of where it was resting on the desk, he quickly got it working again, levitating the rat back up into the air.

Harry tried several different avenues, eventually bringing out the other two rats and injecting the potion into them as well, noting down how each reacted to it. Interestingly, each one seemed to react about the same-that being with intense terror. Two of the rats were set aside to document how long the potion's effects would persist, while the first was rather morbidly killed over and over as he tried to figure out any sort of physical effects the potion might have, dissecting the small body and looking for any organ or muscle damage.

_ “~It seems that all the effects are mental, strangely enough.~”  _ He was speaking more to himself than Jörmungandr, as the snake had settled down for a nap hours prior and was very clearly asleep next to him, his massive head blocking Harry’s only mode of escape from his seat. Glaring down at the living legend for a brief moment, he glanced back to the mice, watching with interest as the two he had set aside huddled as far away from each other as physically possible in the small cage he had set them in, burrowing deep into the bedding in an effort to hide. Tilting his head slightly, Harry marked down ‘socially paranoid’ with his other notes, contemplating the aggressive shift in personality as well as all other factors. There was really no way to figure out how the potion would work in humans till he injected someone with it, but he worried that a physical injury like a needle wound would be far too noticable and thus make people concerned for his potential victim’s health. 

Sighing, he rubbed at his eyes, contemplating what time it could possibly be.  _ Draco’s going to be ticked off if I sleep in tomorrow morning.  _ He cast a tempus, finding with annoyance that it was already, technically, morning. Lazily cracking his neck, Harry stood from his chair, about to attempt to crawl around Jörmungandr before a sharp spike of pain through his skull made his knees buckle, sending him to the floor with a thud.

“Bloody-”

He groaned lowly, gripping at his temples as a familiar screech reverberated through his head, filling up every crevice of his mind and making his ears ring. Clenching his teeth tightly, Harry took a short, choppy breath, eyelids pressed tightly together as the screeching tapered off into a familiar hiss. He gasped for air, blinking away spots in his vision as he attempted to figure out where he was, ears ringing and tongue bleeding from where he bit down in an effort not to scream.

“Voldemort-? What…oh.” Harry took quick breaths, coming down from the pain as he found himself lying on the cold stone floor, head pressed into the bricks. It seemed that his wendigo had decided to take an aggressive route in notifying him of Tom’s freedom. Grunting, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, rubbing his head tiredly. “When I said to tell me when Tom was free to go, I didn't mean like  _ that.” _

The hiss reverberated through his skull once more, quietly tempting him into his mindscape. Sighing tiredly, Harry rolled over onto his back. It wouldn't do to leave his demon or Tom waiting, Merlin knows what would happen. Closing his eyes, Harry sank into his mind, preparing for a long overdue reunion.

* * *

Sirius sat in a familiar office in Gringotts bank, having snuck in through the Knockturn entrance. It had been great fun making himself a nuisance until someone finally listened to his request to speak with the Black account manager, but now he was exactly where he needed to be.

It had taken a lot of tricky wand work with a wand that only half responded to him, but Sirius had eventually managed to land in a field near a muggle park, casting several rather unnecessary disillusionment spells on his bike to make sure it stayed out of sight. He had worried about being recognised in Diagon, so even if he was only planning to be in it for a few moments, he still cast several glamours on his clothes and person. It ended up being unnecessary however, as once he snuck through a rather rowdy and drunk crowd in the Leaky Cauldron and into Diagon, it was clear that the only people out and about that night were either sloshed to the point of incapacitation or very near it. Still though, it was good to be thorough, and he felt assured in his anonymity when waltzing into Gringotts’ Knockturn entrance.

His accounts manager, Goldtooth, peered down at his ratty prisoner’s uniform and filthy appearance from where he sat behind the desk, clearly unimpressed in him. The goblins had forced the glamours off of him the second he had moseyed into the place, so it was hardly Sirius’ fault he looked near death. “I see you have managed to find your way back to civilization, Heir Black?”

Sirius grinned in response, tapping his bare feet against the cold tile below as he peered around the impeccably clean office. “I'm still heir Black then? Well, that makes this easier.”

Sure, he could have gone straight to France, but from his memories of the beach house, the place would be in desperate need of repair, and he had yet to find himself some clothes that weren’t rags. Goblins were shockingly neutral in wizarding affairs, considering how intertwined they were in wix commerce, and wouldn't be too terribly bothered by his being there requesting service. That being said, since they didn't particularly care for the ministry either, Sirius could waltz into Gringotts with little but a glance of mild disdain from any of the goblins and request to completely empty his family's vault if he wished.

They also had no problem giving him the money, as long as they got a bit in the pocket as well.

“I would like to draw 1,000,000 galleons from the Black vault for recreation and renovation purposes.”

Goldtooth raised a single eyebrow, “what sort of renovations?”

“Home renovations.” It was best to be as vague as possible with the little buggers, as while he could certainly get away with galavanting around, the ministry could just as easily question Goldtooth on any recent transactions and the goblin would tell them. That is, if they paid enough gold, and considering the ministry tended to throw galleons around like candy, it was safe to say they would get as much information as they wished.

“Hmmm…” His accounts manager shuffled papers around his desk for a moment, seemingly attempting to find the proper documents before a familiar key was revealed from one of the stacks. “Gringotts requests a 15% confidentiality tax along with the usual fees, due to your current public image.” 

That was unsurprising, hush money was quite typical of the goblins when they dealt with rich criminals on the run. Nodding along, Sirius followed after the short creature and down to the carts, happy to get the opportunity to use his family’s money to flee the country, as well as waste it on no doubt frivolous expendages. After a short ride down to the deeper recesses of the old mines, Sirius found himself standing in the Black vault, looking around in mild disdain at all the familiar portraits and no doubt illegal dark tomes. He distantly registered Goldtooth’s movements, as the goblin held up a small pouch in the air, nodding as thousands of gallons flew into it, no doubt being counted out into the proper amount of money to the letter. His ‘confidentiality tax’ would likely be put in a separate bag for the goblin to enjoy himself, unless they had a way to instantly place the money in a separate vault. It didn't matter to Sirius any, as he cared very little about what happened to the Black fortune once he was done plundering through it. Turning away from the goblin, Sirius walked along through the vault, occasionally picking up something interesting or familiar. There was a wide array of jewelry in the vault, most of it having belonged to his mother and ancestors, and he pocketed all of the more expensive-looking ones in order to barter them off in France. He left the books alone, not feeling particularly inclined to get his bits cursed off if the protective enchantments were triggered. Rooting around through the back of the vault, Sirius found with no little amount of glee that his family had the old wands of past Blacks stored back there, all thrown into a large chest haphazardly. Rooting through it, he was shocked to find his own wand buried there, along with his fathers. Who had put it in there, he wondered?

Standing, he cast a cautious lumos, finding with delight that the wand worked just as well as it always had, with only sight pushback against him. Sirius pocketed it, and turned to leave when a familiar bag caught his eye. It was nearly invisible among the old trunks and dangerous antiques, but he recognized it all the same. Stumbling slightly, Sirius fell to his knees in front of it, brushing a hand across the dust and revealing the worn black leather that laid beneath the age. He peered down at his brother’s old school bag with quiet regret, reading the inset initials that proved who the satchel belonged to without a shadow of a doubt. He didn't know what had come of Regulus after his incarceration, but was aware the younger man had gone missing in ‘79. Sirius could only assume that he had been killed for attempting to back out of being a death eater, likely after realizing just what he was expected to do. Regulus had never been built out of the right kind of stuff for that sort of work-the sort of hatred that was needed and necessary to be capable of actions beyond belief-to be a follower of Voldemort. It had been quite clear to Sirius from a young age that his little brother wouldn't make it in that sort of life.

Pulling back the worn flap, Sirius unabashedly rifled through the contents of the bookbag, finding mostly school books and notes-the occasional trinket thrown in for flavor. A leatherbound book caught his eye however, and he gingerly pulled it free from its confines, peering down at the black leather and its gold accents. Brushing away the invisible dust, he opened it, squinting at the words scrawled in an elegant font across the inner cover. ‘Property of Regulus Arcturus Black’ was all it read, spelling out quite plainly that it was likely a journal or diary of some kind. Turning to the first page, Sirius looked down at his baby brother’s familiar handwriting, the scrawl taking him back to before Hogwarts, when things were simpler and much, much worse. Skimming the first few entries, he found that the journal seemed to detail the comings and goings of the slytherin’s seventh year at Hogwarts, normal things like school work or friends, nothing that hinted at the future death eater or murdered deflector his brother had become. A droplet of water splashed across the page, doing nothing to smudge the long-since dried ink. He wiped the tears away, grabbing the old bag and its contents along with the journal. They were all he would need besides the money, he wouldn't take anything more from his family but his own shame.

Walking back to the front of the vault, he caught Goldtooth’s eye and nodded at the goblins beckoning. He was handed the small pouch, on which displayed the correct amount of galleons across the fabric, enchanted to show how much money was left in it. “Here you are, Heir Black. Now, if you would like to take up your title-”

“Hell no, Cissy can have it for all I care, send the next in line a missive.” Waving the question away, he shoved the journal back into the bag, throwing out a modicum of school texts to make room for the stolen jewelry and future items.

“That would be who you detailed in your will, which would be Heir Hadrian Potter-”

“Brilliant. Give it to Harry then.” Throwing the pouch of coins into the leather satchel as well, Sirius stormed out of the vault, not bothering to look back at his family, turning away from the lot of them for the second time. He clutched the old book bag closer to his chest, all but one of them, that is. He wouldn't abandon Regulus again.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes, glancing around at his mindscape before darting down a hall, taking several steps at a time on his way down to the chamber. His feet splashed into a puddle as he sprinted through the cavernous space that marked the hall between his and Tom’s minds, slowing to a stop as he locked eyes with the wendigo.

“...mornin’” It made a snorting sound he could somewhat compare to a horse, and stepped to the side, allowing him a clear passage towards the circular door. Cautiously, Harry made his way towards it, keeping his eyes firmly locked onto his demon so as to not let his guard down. Reaching for the door, he hissed for it to ‘open’, and pulled on the handle till it begrudgingly obeyed. And then, quick as a viper, he darted inside and slammed the door shut, the sound echoing through the room as the demon screeched in mock anger.

Breathing out a sigh, Harry had all of two seconds to get his bearings before strong arms yanked him backwards, a much taller man pulling him into a bone crushing hug. Throwing his arms around Tom, Harry breathed in and nearly collapsed, clutching his father as if letting go would throw him off into the abyss.

“You infernal child.” Tom pulled away, yanking him gently over to a familiar couch, muttering about foolish children and idiotic demons. “What on earth has been going on up there?” 

Harry didn't reply, instead staring blankly at the man as he tried to figure out what on earth had happened. Tom looked like a wreck, his shirt rumpled and stained with blood as purple bruises covering his face and arms. His jaw was the worst of it, looking swollen and messily relocated after a sharp dislocation.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Tom winced, rubbing his jaw gently as he licked his lip. “I miscalculated how long it takes for injuries to heal here, and got rather obsessed with... roughhousing with my younger self.”

Harry blinked, before squinting at the man in silent judgement, “you-I’m sorry, what?”

Tom rolled his eyes, pushing Harry down onto the couch before collapsing into an adjacent armchair. “It was rather therapeutic, if barbaric.”

_ Oh merlin, he really isn't joking. _

Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’ve been beating the shite out of your horecruxes over the past few months?  _ That's  _ what you've been up to?”

Tom sniffed, rubbing his injured jaw contemplatively, wincing as he pressed down on a tender area. “You say that as if it is morally disreputable.”

“Because it is? What exactly was the purpose of doing something like that?” A victorian tea set appeared before them, and Harry busied himself with making them both tea while Tom grumbled.

“In my defense, the ring has got to be the most self-centered, snooty, megalomaniacal monster of the lot, and that is truly saying something considering all of the locket’s dysfunctions.”

Harry handed him his tea, sitting back with his own and watching as Tom attempted not to get the blood dripping from his lip onto the rim. “Still, getting into a tussle with your past self-even if said past self has a rather shite personality-is no way to go about things. Aren't you trying to get them to agree with you or something?” 

Tom winced, his tongue darting out to run over his split lip a second time. “That  _ thing _ is beyond my help, I would rather get my frustrations out on the little maggot than bother attempting to speak with it a moment longer.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, sipping his tea as Tom attempted not to moan and groan about his various injuries. “It seems he got his frustrations out on you as well.” 

The man rolled his eyes, the unholy gleam of red in his irises gaining a sickly hue, as if hell itself was rising up from his soul. “Come now Harry, you don't think that little of me do you? That pathetic little menace was nothing but a wheezing husk of soul matter once I was through with him.”

Harry finished off his tea, leaning forward and pouring another cup as he contemplated his father’s words. “You're making good connections then, what with all the senseless violence.”

Tom held up his hand, attempting to wiggle his left pointer finger with little luck. Muttering under his breath, he gripped it and yanked, popping it back in its socket with hardly any indication of his pain. “The senselessness was what was therapeutic about it, and I can't make any connections with a soul so foolhardy that it refuses to see reason.” The man grinned, bloodied and monstrous as he took a dainty sip of his tea. “Now, what have you been getting up to, child of mine?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No mice were harmed in the making of this chapter. 
> 
> Both of Harry’s father figures are officially free! I just realized while writing this note that I had set up the chapter like that, kinda funny how events fall together sometimes. This was a lot of fun to write, since Sirius is always a hot mess and Tom is just… hot……… anyway!


	68. The Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry attempts to walk a tightrope between selflessness and selfishness as he continues to miss the point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD why was this so fuckin hard to write it took like three days just to figure out the timeline FUCK
> 
> Anyway hope you enjoy ヾ(￣▽￣)

“You're not allowed to get mad.”

“What. Did. You. Do?”

They were in a bit of a standoff, with Harry stalling as long as he could and Tom getting increasingly concerned about the potentially lethal shenanigans that his son might have been getting up to during his mental imprisonment. Harry bit his lip, contemplating his options as Tom’s eyes narrowed into slits, carefully testing the boundaries between concerned and livid. On one hand, he could tell Tom everything and get yelled at, or he could tell him _some_ things and get yelled at later when the man was destined to figure out all the crucial details Harry had omitted.

_Perhaps I made a mistake coming in here._

“See… here's the thing-”

“What. Did. You. DO.”

Begrudgingly, and while wincing rather heavily, Harry attempted to give his father a short overview of the past five months, attempting to brush over the nasty bits like the shrieking shack or almost getting drugged with little avail. Despite wishing to be as brief as possible, his explanation started to stretch on as Tom kept on motioning for him to continue or elaborate. It had taken an impressive amount of self control on Tom’s part to not to interrupt at any point, and Harry was both thankful and slightly impressed with the man for his patience. 

“-of course, since she drugged it I couldn't exactly eat them, even if I likely wouldn’t be affected at all, so I gave them to one of the upper years that was annoying me.” Tapering off with an uncomfortable laugh, he sat back and watched Tom’s reaction. When there wasn’t one, the room quickly descended into silence, and Harry was forced to sit there and smile (grimace) as Tom took a long sip of his now slightly bloody tea. As Tom’s silence continued, Harry began to fidget again, rubbing his thumb against the smooth porcelain cup in his hand as his toe tapped an unsteady rhythm into the stone floor.

Sure, the shrieking shack had been a tad messy, all things considered, but he could hardly be at fault for Ginny Weasley’s dysfunction, and he was already planning on dealing with it soon, so there shouldn’t really be anything to get mad about. Realistically, Tom should be happy nothing _else_ happened during that time, as not only had Harry been forced to go about life on his own without the man whispering in his ear, but the wendigo kept trying to be as annoying as physically possible. Really, Tom should be impressed with his ability to keep calm under pressure, it wasn’t his fault these things kept on happening.

“You're grounded.”

He blinked, the words cutting through the silence like a knife. “Wha-sorry?”

Tom was eerily calm, nodding assuredly as he took a sip from his cup. “You heard me. Grounded, that's what you are.”

Harry made a strangled noise, staring with obvious confusion at the man as he sputtered, trying to find the right words. “You can't ground me!”

“Watch me.”

He rolled his eyes, “sure-alright, okay fine,” he set his teacup down a little harder than necessary, cracking it from base to brim as he glared up at the uncomfortably relaxed man across from him. “-and how, pray tell, do you plan on enforcing this punishment?”

Tom’s eyes got steely, the hard glint of an angry parent overtaking his bruised features and twisting them into something akin to sternness. “You are hereby banned from saving anyone’s lives for precisely one year.”

Harry blinked again, jaw dropping in shock. _Is he serious?_ Gathering himself, Harry adopted something of a glare as he prepared to argue. “I'll repeat myself, since you obviously didn't hear me the first time. How _exactly_ are you going to stop me? You can't exactly enforce any rules here, or have you forgotten who's mind you're sitting in?”

Tom licked his lip, sitting back with an infuriating look of victory splashed across his face. “I'm in your mind, or have you forgotten? Now, I'm sure a child of your age and intellect would never understand the inter-complexities of such a statement-” Harry felt a sudden kinship with the ring horcrux, as the unconsolable need to sock his father in the jaw grew by the second. “-but as I exist in your mind, it is as easy as removing one book from your library-or perhaps reversing a painting so it faces the wall, and you'll be physically incapable of risking your life for someone else.” He waved his arms around for emphasis as Harry scoffed.

“Sure, and why exactly is this such an issue for you? Saving lives can't really be the root of the issue. Or... perhaps some of your more sadistic tendencies have bled through your self control?” Tom’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, pointing a broken finger in Harry’s direction as he hissed in anger. _“~It is an issue because you could have very easily gotten hurt-you did get hurt! Just because you can’t die through injuries doesn't mean you should search them out!~”_

Harry leapt to his feet, eyes glowing with green anger as flecks of gold danced through the air. _“~This is about the shrieking shack incident, isn't it? If you don't recall, Draco is my soulmate! I couldn't just leave him in there!~”_

Tom practically _growled,_ standing himself and easily towering over Harry, who felt tempted to open the door for the wendigo, who was scratching angrily at it-rearing up for a fight. “You know what else he is? Fireproof! You however, are very much combustible!”

“That's besides the point!”

“That _is_ the point!” Tom stalked around the table to stand over him, eyes blazing like hellfire. “You do _too_ much for _no_ reason-that's the entire bloody point-you've done too much for too little and sometimes for no good reason! When are you going to stop being so bloody _selfless?”_

Harry felt ice cracking across his skin, the quiet but nearby howling of the wendigo as it attempted to react to his anger reverberating through his skull. “I am so far from selfless it's absurd that you would even-”

Strong arms gripped his shoulders, shaking him as Tom appeared about ready to scream. “You, Hadrian James Potter, need to do things for _yourself._ Not for Draco Malfoy, not for Death or Fate or any other stupid _useless_ old god with too much time on their hands, and _certainly_ not for me. Just for you.” His voice shifted, almost seeming pleading as his grip tightening as his eyes turned downwards. Harry felt the anger dissipate, and suddenly he was colder than he had ever been. Tom’s grip loosened, and he found himself being pulled back into a tight hug, Tom’s fingers carding through his hair gently. Softly.

“You can't carry the world on your shoulders Harry, you've already tried it once in another life and I killed you for it. Don't be selfless again. _Please.”_

The words echoed, reverberating through the room like the gong of a bell. “Live for yourself. Stop living for the sake of other people. You died for others, let them die for you. Just this once.”

* * *

Sirius had spent far more time searching for the beach house than he would like to admit. Sure, he could vaguely recall where it was supposed to be, he hadn’t been there since his parents still considered him their son... so it had been quite some time. However, while flying over a grouping of newer houses scattered along the beach, he felt a pull towards a steep hill covered with thick trees. Flying far above it, he spotted an old house half buried in the massive branches, one set apart from the rest-one that sat on the edge of a cliff several miles away from its neighbors. He squinted, managing to make out the black stained paneling of a rickety old wrap-around porch. The house was certainly old enough to be the beach house, though he distinctly remembered it actually being on the beach, not some random cliff. Had it been moved when the new muggle development went in?

Angling towards a small clearing he might be able to consider a front lawn, he touched down on the withered grass, looking around with somber nostalgia. It looked just like the beach house, except a decade older and far more decrepit. Hopping from the torn bike seat, it was a quick matter of propping his ride up against the nearest vertical surface and climbing the steps to the front door. Looking down at the rusted key hole, he struggled with getting the iron key to do much else but scrape against the interior mechanisms. Cursing slightly, he reared back and slammed into the door, hitting the wards but still somehow managing to knock the handle off and with it, the rusted lock. Upon entry, he found that not only was the home void of a house elf of any kind-going off of the sheer amount of dust that blanketed the place-but was also in need of rather extensive repairs, with the wards just barely hanging on by a thread. It was a miracle the poor thing had managed to find him up in the air and even more incredible that it was able to latch onto him, perhaps his bike held enough ambient magic from lying around Hogwarts for a decade to bridge the distance?

Sighing quietly, Sirius hopped around a fallen painting of a moth eaten ancestor and moved towards the foyer, taking in the dusty old couches and dustier old windows, which were covered with so much grime that barely any light could get into the already dreary place.

“Well… cleaning charms it is.”

He spent what had to be hours going through the entire house, just getting rid of the dust and grime and rat carcasses. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon as he attempted to charm the bathtub into functioning, coaxing new magic through the ancient enchantments with little luck. Turning the tap, he leapt back with a nervous and confused shout as the pipes began to shudder and shake.

“That can't be good-oh shite.” Backing away slowly, Sirius watched with detached acceptance as one of the pipes burst, spraying freezing ocean water into the previously clean bathroom. Rubbing his now quite wet face with one hand, he waved his wand and stopped the aggressive flow of water before he drowned, the pipe suturing back together and the tap turning back to neutrality.

“Alright… new plan: Leave the house as is, go buy new clothes, and then buy a bloody elf.”

Satisfied with his new plan (which was sure to not get him splashed with sea water again), Sirius quickly cleaned the bathroom a second time, before turning his wand towards his own person and submitting himself to a substantial amount of cleaning charms in a last ditch effort to stop smelling like he hadn’t showered in over a decade. Cleaning charms were, generally, either used on objects or small upsets on a person, like a dirty dish or a bit of dirt on one’s nose. When applied to a wide area (like the entire body) the charm tends to either itch horribly or absolutely _drench_ someone in soap. Both options were rather uncomfortable, and Sirius always preferred to either just stay filthy or get a proper shower. 

Scratching his arms and neck aggressively for a moment, he renewed the glammors that made his clothes appear like normal wizarding garb and pulled his ratty hair up in a rather wretched bun, hoping that the posh people of France would let him off of the hook for his less than ideal state.

“Right then, time to go shopping.”

* * *

**Soul bonds, and the people who they befall (commonly called soulmates), are perhaps the most infamous of magical binding in the world, if the most rare. You see, soul bonds do not form upon the willingness of two parties, but instead through what is called soul compatibility.**

**Soul compatibility, despite the rather basic name, is a complex form of magic that is completely lost on typical magical humans, as it takes not only an incredible amount of magic, but the ability to point out two compatible souls in the ever growing sea of human souls to find two that could potentially be a match. Due to this, the magic behind soul compatibility has been largely left up to the gods-if they do truly exist-as there has yet to be any way for humans to harness and control it.**

**Due to the rather lacking capabilities of magical mankind, the observation and research of soul bonds has been largely made through trial and error, as those who exhibit bonds have been hunted down to be researched extensively through the centuries. Though findings vary widely between bonds, three things can be seen in every instance of a soul bond that researchers contend as being the ‘laws’ of soulmates.**

  * **Both people have to ‘accept’ the bond in order for it to fully form.**


  * **Soulmates are always physically and mentally comfortable with each other, even if they have known each other for little less than a day.**


  * **When one mate dies, the surviving always follows shortly after, if it be by succumbing to heartbreak and wasting away, or by suicide.**



**(In order to go into more depth about these three characteristics, it should be duly noted that soul bonds can be platonic, romantic, and sexual at the same time, or separately, as it is often shown that two people can become soulmates but never gain romantic or sexual attraction, and vice versa. Though soulmates are always fond of each other, as the bond requires a certain amount of affection to thrive.)**

**When it is said that both people have to ‘accept’ the bond in order for it to form, it does not so literally mean accepting the magical binding of two souls. Instead what this is most commonly referencing, is the magic behind intent. You see, two people can not form a soul bond unless they are actually aware of the bond existing, as once they become aware their magic will be able to acknowledge such a thing and seek out their match. This is partially why soulmates are so rare, as it takes a pair that is intuitive and knowledgeable to be able to form the bond. Through this realization, the presence of a potential soul bond is now detailed in most inheritance tests, as it would allow more bonds the potential to form. This is not to say the discovery of a soul bond immediately makes it so that the bond is formed, as the decision still has to be a conscious agreement by the wix’s mind, i.e. even if both sides of the bond are aware that it exists, if one half does not want it, the bond will not form.**

**On the subject of physical and emotional connection, soulmates are able to both betray all logic as well as emulate nature. Souls, much like the bodies they are housed in, need physical touch to thrive. This is best exemplified through the discovery that humans in infancy will die due to a lack of physical touch if they are not held enough. Souls play into this in a way that not many realize, as they are the part of humans that crave this touch, as the affection given to the body (or lack thereof) can effectively save or kill a soul. This works in regards to soulmates as something of a current, as the affection that soulmates give to each other effectively fuels their soul’s ability to be healthy. It has been known that prolonged time apart between soulmates can manifest as increased bouts of aggression, irritation, insomnia, depression, physical aches and eventual illness as the body’s immune system slows to a standstill.**

Draco threw the book away from him as if it burned, nearly falling off his chair in an effort to get as far away from it as possible. The first several chapters had gone on about the passing daily life of the author, as she documented experiments in a detached way that made him incredibly bored. So, feeling that Harry was either trying to bore him to death or that the later chapters would be more interesting, Draco had set the book aside for a few weeks and went about his life. However, as April twenty fifth crept closer and closer, and as spring bloomed over the Scottish countryside, he had begrudgingly taken it back up again.

This though, was enough to send him spiralling out of control.

It was too _familiar,_ the aches in his chest and the wretched insomnia that he had lived with for the duration of yule break being the first thing that came to mind. The second being how comfortable he felt around Harry-how he had _always_ felt comfortable around Harry.

He had never gotten an inheritance test.

Of course he hadn't, what was the reason to get one? With the enchantments placed on the Malfoy bloodline there was no point. Had Harry gotten one? Was that why he had sent this book? _Of course he did, you moron._ Then that would mean of course, that Harry knew if they were soulmates or not-he had to, what would be the reasoning behind gifting him the book if he didn’t?

_But that would mean that…_

“In three bloody years he never said a word.”

Draco didn't want to entertain the possibility, why the hell would Harry _not_ say something about something so unbelievably important as them being soulmates? No, there had to be a different reason for the book, perhaps Harry thought it was romantic? Reaching back out, he quickly found his place and continued to read, flames of deep red heat flickering dangerously close to the parchment as they traveled down his arms.

**However, there are always negative effects to something so personal as a soul bond, and the subject of death has often been brought up as to question if the positives outweigh the negatives. As it stands, all accounts in human history reveal that soulmates always die within a week of each other, as either the emotional anguish or the soul-codependency plays a heavy hand in the surviving partner. In cases where the bond is older-upwards of a decade in the very least-the surviving partner is seen to instantly lose energy and willpower, as their soul and by extension their magic was irrevocably tied to the other. In younger, more tragic cases, where the first to die usually does so through physical injury or sudden illness, the survivor is overcome with suicidal tendencies, going to incredible lengths to end their own life in order to stop the physical and emotional pain. This tragedy of soulmates is the most common argument against them, and has led to a severe drop in fully formed soulbonds over the past millennium, as it is believed that a lifetime of discomfort is much better than a life cut short.**

Draco took very deep breaths, fingers crumpling the page as fire continued to race up and down his arms. Was _this_ why Harry had never said anything? So that they could be alive in the instance that one of them died? Or was he just playing games, attempting to scare him with stories of relationships so similar to theirs that they might just be-

“No-no! Harry wouldn't do that to me.” He threw the book across the room, taking short choppy breaths as tears began streaming down his cheeks, sizzling and evaporating due to the ambient heat. Harry _loved_ him, in no world would Harry Potter do something to scare him on purpose. There had to be a _reason,_ there had to be a thought process. Harry was logical, there was always a reason behind his actions, even if they were obscenely out of the blue and lacking in both class and dignity.

“Hey Drac-oh merlin what the hell?” Blaise’s voice cut through the overwhelming silence, his arms grabbing at Draco’s shoulders before quickly pulling away with a yelp. “Circe-is that fucking _fire?”_

“Get away from him Blaise.” A steady voice that couldn’t be anyone but Theo cut through Blaise’s panic, and he relaxed slightly as a wave of cold water was splashed across his arms and shoulders, sizzling and cracking on contact.

“Draco-hey mate, Blaise can you get the ‘ell out of here?”

“But-”

 _“Now,_ Zabini.”

Theo appeared in his line of sight, walking a straight path towards the offending book that had crashed onto the opposite wall and picking it up, reading the cover before cursing under his breath. Draco glared at it, slumping down in his seat as the sound of a door slamming signaled that Blaise had left the room. Theo turned, holding up the book as if it was the root of all evil.

“What's this then?”

“A christmas present.”

Theo muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘some present’ before setting it firmly back onto Draco’s desk, pulling Harry’s chair away from his own desk so he was able to sit facing Draco. They sat there, with Draco steaming and Theo watching him for a moment, eyes analytical and lacking in emotion.

“Alright then, so you figured it out?”

Flames sizzled and cracked up his waterlogged sleeves, the soaked fabric effectively tampering down the ambient heat. A spark turned into a fire, and he reached forward and grabbed the boy by his collar, anger and grief and insecurity clouding his judgment. “You KNEW?”

Theo was unperturbed, silently and gently removing Draco’s hand from his collar. “I figured it out last year.”

Leaping to his feet, Draco began to pace, arms of fire whipping around and testing the capabilities of the fire-proofing enchantments cast onto the dorm after his last meltdown. “What-and you decided to keep it to yourself? Thought it would be funny to tell Harry and not me did you?”

Theo raised an eyebrow. “I'm quite certain Harry has known about the potential bond since before you two even met, but that is besides the point.”

Theo was perfectly calm in a completely aggravating way, and fire threatened to burst through the water clinging to him as it evaporated, steam rolling off of him steadily. 

“That IS the bloody point!” Throwing his arms in the air, Draco kicked his chair in the effort to let off some of his frustrations. “I deserve tha' right to bloody know if I’ve got a FOOKIN’ SOULMATE!”

Flames erupted, singeing his bed curtains and threatening to light the dorm ablaze before Theo cast another aquimenti, dousing him under a chilly stream of water. “Calm down.”

“’M BLOODY FOOKIN CALM!”

Another douse of water hit him right in the face, and Draco sputtered for a moment as Theo sat there, infuriatingly calm and with a look of careful indifference splashed across his face. The anger immediately dissipated, replaced only with a horribly empty cavern in his chest. Sniffing, he rubbed away the water that dripped into his eyes and took a shaky breath, slumping down to the floor.

“Why didn’t either of you _tell me?_ I have a right-it… its _my soul too,_ I-I deserve to _know.”_

Theo was quiet, watching as Draco shivered and cried with careful eyes. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“Why didn’t he then-why didn’t Harry…” He choked back a sob, running a hand down his face as tears began to join the water already soaking his face. “He-he _loves_ me, why wouldn’t he-”

“Do you love him?”

“Of course I do!”

“Does he know that?”

“I-but I… he-no he doesn’t but-” He stopped, rubbing his face as he let out short, unsteady breaths. What had Harry said to do before? What was it about counting and deep breaths?

_“Deep breaths Dray, take in as much oxygen as you can as slowly as you can… Yeah, just like that. Okay-shite, I'm going to start counting, alright? I want you to breathe in till I reach ten, then hold it for another five, then release slowly for seven, alright? We're going to do that till you’re calm again.”_

It wasn’t the same without Harry’s hand resting firmly against his chest, but Draco still made an attempt to breath slowly, thinking of nothing but numbers as he counted in his mind.

_Breath in for ten seconds, hold it for five, release for seven._

Theo nodded along with the breathing, watching from where he sat, detached and disconnected from the entire scene, quietly watching with those mismatching eyes of his.

Once he stopped steaming, Theo began to speak again, his voice monotone and holding nothing but the truth. “I don't want to say that Harry was in the right for not telling you, because he most certainly was _not,_ but you have to remember that he is a logical person to the point of being illogical, and I don't doubt that he thought it would be better not to say anything.”

His breathing steadied, and Draco slumped against his bed and stared blankly at Harry's own, wanting nothing more than to crawl under the covers and run away from the world. He wanted to hunt down Harry and slap him into the next century, scream and yell till his voice was hoarse, but he also just wanted to fall asleep tangled up in long arms-just wanted to let go of the anger and be done with it. Was this the soul bond talking, or was he really that temperamental to be turned on and off at the drop of a hat?

“I want to yell at him, but I don't-does that make sense?”

Theo shifted, his left ankle coming up to rest against his right knee. “You find comfort with him-are generally relaxed when you two are together. That conditioned feeling of safety and security is clashing with your anger. It's completely understandable to want two conflicting things at the same time, just how it is fair to request both and get neither.”

Draco sighed, running a hand through his thoroughly ruined hair. “I hate how you speak in riddles, do all you divination freaks talk like this?”

Theo appeared apologetic, which had to be the first emotion he had shown through the entire conversation. “Sorry, Luna’s gotten me into the habit of-well… nevermind.” The boy rubbed his cheek, eyes glazed over as he sought out something Draco couldn't conceptualize. “What I recommend, is to first try to understand your own emotions before making Harry fathom them. Anger is the root of miscommunication and almost always leads to problems.”

He didn’t respond at first, instead looking towards the book lying innocently on his desk. “Do you think the book was his way of telling me.”

Theo appeared perturbed, glancing at the slightly singed pages. “Personally… it doesn't seem like something he would do.”

Draco couldn’t help but agree.

* * *

Harry had, admittedly, taken the declaration of his grounding with the grace of an incredibly pissed off bull, acting in a way that was very unlike him and ultimately quite childish, much to his eventual embarrassment. However, he stood by the admission that he was _not_ selfless in the least, far from it in fact, as he was very selfish about a number of different things that didn't at all correlate with the few instances where he acted selfless.

In the week that followed the argument with Tom, Harry came to realize his pseudo father may have a small point. That wasn't to say that the man was in the right by grounding him for an entire bloody year, but Harry could now admit that he might have a... _bit_ of a hero complex left over from his first life. A small one though. Reserved only for those he cared about. That was it.

Harry glared down at his charms homework as if it had personally offended him, attempting quite unsuccessfully to burn a hole through the parchment. The past week had passed by about as normal and mind-numbingly boring as it always was, with the only mild upset being Theo, who seemed to be looking at him more often than he had already been doing so. Thinking about it, several people were looking at him oddly, Theo just being the one he spent the most time around. Ginny Weasley for instance, seemed intent on staring a hole in the back of his head during meals, and both Tracey and-strangely enough-Parkinson watched him as if at any second he would explode and start cursing them to pieces. It was getting incredibly irritating, and to expel that irritation he was sneaking out almost every night, attacking his bow lessons with the ferocity of a man training for war.

“Hey Harry?”

“Mhm?”

The sound of soft footfalls allerted him to movement on his left, and he turned slightly to watch as Luna stood from where she had been seated, practically floating over to where he was lounging in his chair. “Have you ever inadvertently hurt someone?”

He squinted at the girl with a mix of suspicion and worry, whenever Luna said something convoluted and strange, it would almost always come back to bite him in the ass.

“I… I’m not sure.”

She nodded, looking at his half-finished charms homework with interest. “We never are, not until someone confronts us about it.”

He felt dread pooling behind his eyes, the anger of his argument with Tom and the continued agitation caused by Ginny fucking Weasley accumulating like a large ball of lead in his stomach. “Luna, if you know something-”

“I think it would be better if people didn't make mistakes that hurt others, but part of being human is being imperfect. It is what makes us perfect.” She interrupted him, eyes glazed over as she stared at his left shoulder. “It's funny how imperfectly perfect people are, especially you.”

He didn't know what to make of her, it was obvious that she was alluding to something happening-that he had hurt someone... somehow.

“I don't understand what you're trying to tell me.”

Her head tilted to the side, eyes roaming from his shoulder to a spot just above his left eyebrow-the start of his scar, he realised. “You will, maybe not right now, but soon.”

She smiled at him, before standing once more, grabbing up all her books and setting them in front of him. “You can have these, I can't read them all that well anyway.” And then she was gone, her warning of coming storms doing little to quell his worry.

_Selfless or selfish. Which am I?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know that this story has been having a lot of love related things in it, but I want to say something in regards to that for everyone to chew on: This isn't a love story, it's a story with love in it. In truth, this is a revenge story, where the one seeking revenge finds more than just revenge along the way. I say this because with all the romance in recent chapters, I worry that some people might forget that while Drarry is certainly an element, and it is clearly tag, and I’m sure a few people probably started reading just for the Drarry, the main focus of the final story is telling something completely unrelated to love, it's about self-discovery-about becoming something more than you had been. It is a discovery of who you want to be after existing in the image of what someone else wants you to be.It may be named ‘How Fate Intended’, but in reality it is ‘how Harry became who he wants to be’, and that goes far beyond romance.
> 
> That being said, let's get into some romance!


	69. An Eternity of Inconveniences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fire spawned through hurt and betrayal threatens to break Harry and Draco apart, the secret of two souls nearly intertwined revealing itself like a lightning bolt of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD I hope this is actually good to people that aren't me, I feel like I don't even know how to write anymore.
> 
> HHHhhhhhhh.. I'm sorry this took ages to finish, but I had such horrible writers block and really didn't know exactly how to write the soul bond scene, and basically just sat and stared at it for hours on end feeling stupid and unmotivated. It was the first time I had really felt writers block before, so I was kinda angry at myself for needing to take a break from the fic for a little while.
> 
> Anyway! It's the 69th chapter so I feel obligated to say: N I C E

Harry got back to the common room late at night, having skipped dinner and hours of downtime in lieu of experimenting with the golden mystery potion. Upon further examination of the rats, he could comfortably say that it had either a rather good staying power, or was in the very least semi-permanent, as both of the rats he had not purged of blood were still in quite the tortured state over a week later. He had been tempted to work longer to try and see if any larger mammals were affected similarly, but had decided against it, feeling exhausted from the day and in great need of sleep. Besides, there was no discernible way for him to figure out what the potion’s effects on humans could be till he bit the bullet and injected some poor soul with it, so he felt that the experimentations were more akin to procrastination than constructive additions to his knowledge.

The common room was dark and empty when he entered it, with no light filling it besides the shallow flickering of slowly cooling candle lamps scattered around the room. It was unpleasantly drafty, the spring weather making even the coldest of places in the school stuffy and damp. He squinted at the large window into the black lake, watching as a massive tentacle cautiously crawled across the smooth surface, the already faint light of the full moon refracting through the light and outlining the squid’s appendage. He stood for a moment, basking in the quiet and uncomfortable humidity till he was sure that he would go insane if he sat there for even a moment longer. Casting a cooling charm on himself, Harry made his way up the stairs, head swimming with thoughts as the oppressive atmosphere pressed into his shoulders. Luna’s warning fell from his mind, slipping away with the drafty air.

The hall was just as dark and silent, the quiet meowing of someone’s cat through a closed door being the only noise. Harry slowed upon reaching his dorm, staring at his name embedded in the gold plate. Sighing, he reached for the handle, finding it strangely warm-nearly hot. Frowning, he opened it all the way and made his way in, closing the door behind him and peered around the room. All the candles were lit, making the room hotter and even more oppressive than the common room. Looking around in slight confusion, he found that Blaise was nowhere to be found, the other person inside being Draco, who was reading stiffly at his desk, the candles accumulating on his desk. Blaise occasionally snuck off to the commons in the middle of the night, but he hadn't been out there when Harry was passing through, had Daphne finally figured out how to breach the enchantments on the girl’s dorm entrance?

Draco turned to look at him as he pulled the invisibility cloak off his shoulders, the boy’s silver eyes appearing to him like hardened steel in the low light. Harry felt immediately put on edge, walking slowly from where he had been standing at the door to the foot of Draco’s bed, setting the cloak down on the edge of it as he waited for Draco to speak.

They stared at each other for several tense, prolonged moments, and Harry felt his anxiety spike. There were only a handful of things that Draco had gotten angry at him for, most of which being due to his own foolhardy actions. What had happened while he was holled up in the library?

“Why didn’t you tell me.” Draco’s voice was just as steely as his eyes, razor sharp and cutting through Harry like he was nothing more than thin parchment. He opened his mouth before closing it quickly, tilting his head slowly as he considered the question carefully before answering. There were few things that he had kept from Draco besides… well, there were quite a few things, but none of which he had told anyone else besides Tom, who had full access to his memories anyhow. 

Harry squinted at the book Draco had been reading, trying to figure out if it played into this at all. Draco noticed where he was glancing, and promptly ripped the book off the desk and tossed it at him, before crossing his arms and sitting back in his seat like an angry parent. He caught it deftly, turning the slightly singed tome over in his hands and reading the cover with rising panic. ‘Soul Bonds: an Eternity of Inconveniences with only Moderate Payoff’. Harry took a fast breath in, dropping the book as if it burned.

_ Oh SHITE. _

“Dray-I… Where’d you even find a book like this?”

Draco’s eyes narrowed, the telltale spark of an ensuing fire flickering across his arms. Harry peered down to the floor where he had dropped the book, noticing a dampness clinging to the carpet that had yet to be vanished. His fingers began to pop, a nervous whine bubbling up from his core. 

Draco seemed eerily calm, Harry wouldn’t have even thought that he was angry if it were not for the beginning of a forest fire dancing up and down his arms. The blond took a deep breath, crossing his legs at the ankle and regarding Harry with a carefully calm voice. “I want to have a conversation with you Harry, not dance around the topic. Please be honest, I wont get angry at you for admitting to it.”

Harry glanced back at the book for a second time, confusion apparent in his expression as he attempted to process the words. “Did… did Theo give you this?” It seemed like something Theo might do, but the unbreakable vow should have made it impossible. Draco’s anger seemed to be rising steadily, flames flickering across his fingers as his eyes narrowed further.

“Don’t bullshit me Potter, you know exactly who got that for me.”

“I really don't Dray, I’ve never seen this book in my life-”

“BULLSHITE!”

Harry reared back, nearly toppling onto his ass as fire erupted from Draco. An inferno of different shapes and twisting blue strings of heat reaching out towards him as light completely encompassed his soulmate. Cursing, Harry fell onto his back, panic overtaking him for a moment as he suddenly found himself back in the shrieking shack, fire and anger and fear seeping through the room. The thrumming of a drum burst through his ears, the signs of his wendigo surging upward overwhelming his senses as ice encased his hands and arms, cracking and reforming as he thoughtlessly reacted. 

For a moment, Harry didn’t know who he was, human and wendigo instincts merging together into an incomprehensible mess. He lost himself, his fear and overwhelming feeling that he needed to  _ escape _ nearly drowning out the other side of himself-the one that needed to fix what it saw as its own fault.

Lunging forward, Harry stumbled into the blazing inferno as ice encased his face and chest, molding to the joints of his legs and working in tandem with his muscles as he shambled through the impenetrable sphere of blue light. Reaching into the fire without a second thought, he searched out a familiar face, working completely on instincts as the byproduct of anger and hurt encompassed him.

_ This is my fault, I need to fix it. _

A shining thought broke through the soundless pounding of a drum, the screeching of fire and his own soul dampened by the overwhelming fact. Draco was hurt and angry, he had to do  _ something.  _

The ice hardened and melted simultaneously, water being unsure if it was supposed to be crystalizing onto his skin or wafting through the air as steam. The inferno was doing its very best to warn him off as his frozen skin slought out Draco’s face, fighting desperately against Harry’s much needed presence. His hand brushed slowly against the other boy’s cheek, the touch sent shockwaves of pain up his arm as the source of the fire made contact with his bare fingers. Pressing himself further, ice began to concentrate thickly along his hands, melting and cooling simultaneously but in thicker clumps. Harry leaned down, his other hand brushing through the glowing mass of hair atop Draco’s head, the motion feeling like carding his fingers through rays of sunlight. He couldn’t discern any words to speak, instead allowing the incomprehensible sounds of long forgotten memories to slip from freezing lips, the mystiful singing of an old friend combining with cold waves splashing against mossy rocks. The fire surrounding them began to cool and slow, Draco finally becoming visible through the burning blue.

He leaned closer, forehead resting cautiously against the other boy’s, the motion letting off steam as the ice and fire reacted in tandem to the touch. Draco’s eyes were screwed up tightly, his mouth moving incrementally as he breathed unsteadily. Harry took both his cheeks into his hands, brushing the cracking ice clinging to his fingertips over a reddened cheek. His head was clearing, drums and memories of two minds melted together cracking apart, magic separating and tapering off until all there was was a feeling of strange incompleteness, as though he had forgotten a piece of himself along the way to where he now sat, crouched, in front of a lightly charred chair. Draco looked exhausted and very near collapse-his eyes dazed and threatening to leak tears as Harry continued to brush soothing motions into his skin.

“It's ok Dray, everything's going to be okay.” He looked around the room in awe, finding that the only thing that had been affected by the blaze was Harry’s own sleeves. It seemed that Snape was still just as proficient in magic as always, if he was capable of such strong protective enchantments.

Turning his focus back to Draco, Harry took a moment to be assured that his mind was cleared before attempting to piece together where things had veered off course. Draco had figured out about the soulbond somehow, that much was obvious, and had attempted to rationally confront him on the topic. It also seemed to be that he believed Harry had sent him a book on soulbonds, which would certainly warrant a great deal of anger, but made no sense, as the only other people who knew about it were Theo and Tom, both of which were unable to spill his secrets-be it because of an unbreakable oath, or simply being indisposed till that day. 

Harry frowned, watching Draco as the boy attempted to gather himself, blinking owlishly about the room, his magic clearly expended past what was healthy. “Why… Why didn't you tell me?”

Green met gray, sky met earth. Harry sighed, not fully sure how to answer. “I didn’t know how-I wasn’t sure that you didn’t know at first, and I hadn’t figured it out till the train ride this year-”

“So you thought sending me a bloody book would be better than just telling me?” His voice was quiet, eyes holding clear hurt and distrust. Harry felt something deep in his chest clench, mouth opening and shutting as he attempted to answer. Finding himself incapable, he fell the extra foot forward and landed onto his knees, now staring up at Draco with a pleading expression. “Dray please believe me when I say I didn't send you that book-I would never do something so impersonal, you know that right?”

Draco searched his eyes, the room feeling heartachingly cold after the fire tapered off to mere wisps. “I… I had hoped that you didn't-it had seemed so unlike you that-well… nevermind.”

Draco took a shaky breath, grasping both of Harry’s wrists and pulling him closer. Their foreheads touching once more as Harry sighed with relief. “I love you too, I know I’ve been trying to put off saying it, but I do.”

Heat threatened to overwhelm the ice, but it was a gentle fire-one very unlike the blazing inferno it had been seconds before. Harry took a sharp breath in, watching as Draco brushed his fingers along Harry’s slightly burnt sleeves. For a moment, Harry felt as though he should lean forward and close the distance, but something in Draco’s eyes stopped him, and he settled on merely lowering himself further to the floor, deepening the gap as he craned his neck up further to catch his soulmate’s eyes.

“But…?”

Draco stared for a moment, eyes carding over Harry’s ever-messy hair and down thought his scar, eyes landing on the curve of his jaw. He attempted to swallow, finding it far more difficult than normal as his throat contracted. “But I’m angry with you. Even if you hadn't known till September, you should have told me-half of it belongs to me, you had no right to keep the soul bond secret..” 

His erratic heartbeat seemed to pick up, the ever-changing beat quickening its pace till he was quite certain Draco could feel it. “You're right-absolutely, you're right. Take as long as you need to-we don’t ever have to complete the bond if you don't want-”

“That's not the point, Potter.” Draco sighed, shaking his head as Harry’s mouth snapped shut with a click. “I don't love you in spite of being angry, I’m angry  _ while  _ loving you-they're two different things. Of course I want the bond.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure what to say-wasn’t quite sure what to even  _ think.  _ What was one supposed to say in this kind of situation? He had never really confessed to someone before, his first romantic avenue had been in his fifth year with a girl he wasn’t even sure he actually liked, and had only ended in tears and a great deal of awkwardness. Was this how it was supposed to go? “What is the point then? Please tell me, I seem to keep missing it an awful lot lately.”

Draco let out a quiet breath, his eyes stormy and red from past tears and stress. “The  _ point,  _ Hadrian Potter, is that I don't want you to lie to me anymore. If it involves me in any way-hell, if you have information that might put me in danger or hurt me if it were withheld, I want you to bloody tell me. Do you understand? I can love you for all my life but it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if I can't  _ trust _ you.”

Harry felt something break, a painful twist in his chest pinching his unsteady heart as memories of every single secret of his flew past his eyes. There were things-inconsolably wretched things-that he had kept buried to never be spoken to another living person about. How could he look Draco in the eye and tell him about the hollows? About dying and coming back and Dumbledore and Death and Fate and all that he had been built up on for the last thirteen years of his new life?

“Dray… some things I just can't-”

“I know.” The blond boy murmured into his icy palm, and Harry found himself focused onto the subtle brush of Draco’s lips against his icy skin. “I know. I know you have secrets-I get it, really, I do-and I won't force you to tell me them. But this wasn’t a time where keeping things secret was necessary or at all purposeful, and in the future you need to figure out the difference between necessary secrets and withheld information. Do you understand?”

He nodded quickly, brushing his fingers, which were slowly beginning to thaw, across Draco’s pink cheeks gently. “I'm sorry. I don’t even know why I never said anything-it was stupid and… I should have. I should have told you.” He stopped abruptly, there was nothing really left to say really, apologizing was counterproductive at this point. Draco didn’t seem to even hear him, gaze pointed towards Harry’s left shoulder as he seemingly contemplated something.

“I do want to have the bond, everything I've read proves that it is well worth the drawbacks. I just don’t know how… how do you even accept it? They never seem to write about that.”

Harry’s mouth went dry, and he stumbled over his words for a few moments before choking out a reply. This was so  _ fast.  _ Was it normal to have so many incredibly important things happening in the span of a few minutes? Should he slow them down? “Well... I can feel that you’re fighting it right now, I think...at least you are subconsciously, and have been for months. If I would have to guess, I'd say you need to maybe-I’m not sure, focus on it? For me I had just-it had just snapped into place you know? Easy as breathing.”

Harry felt like he was on fire and buried inside a glacier at the same time, an aggressive contrast of feelings and senses bombarding him as Draco leaned closer. Their foreheads touched for the third time, just barely brushing as flame and snow swirled around the room, infinite and imposing as his vision was overtaken with silvery gray. There was a warm breath on his face, white hair scratching softly against his exposed forehead. Harry began to focus very hard on his own breathing-wishing that it would bring him relief from the all encompassing warmth that was currently overtaking his soul and mind.

There was a soft, almost undetectable tug somewhere deep in his chest, the cautious scree of a veela bubbling up from Draco’s mouth. He hunched his shoulders, head falling to Draco’s shoulder as the boy reached up to brush a hand through dark hair, warm fingers massaging clumsily through the ever-tangled locks. Harry sighed with contentment, presing closer into the warmth as the tugging in his chest became more prominent, slowly turning from a gentle tug to an incessant pull. Draco let out a breath of air, his shoulders sagging as his chin rested on Harry’s head. It was soothing, just sitting there completely enveloped in warm arms. Harry hadn’t ever felt even slightly comfortable in the heat of summer or near the flames of a kindling hearth, but kneeling there, his face pressed into the crook of Draco’s neck… he felt the most safe and secure he had ever been-the warmth something akin to a protective shell than a hateful assault.

“... I'm sorry for what happened in the shrieking shack. It was my fault you were hurt.” Draco’s voice was muffled and quiet, the boy speaking into Harry’s hair as he rubbed slow circles along the tall boy’s scalp, arms wrapped around a tanned neck and fingers tangled into inky black hair. Harry hummed in agreement, leaning further into the gentle motions as a sound bubbled up from his throat-it was a strange mix between a snake hissing and a cat purring, contentment obvious and affection clear. It was a gentle sound, very unlike how the wendigo usually conveyed its emotions, but Harry was hardly paying attention to it.

The pull became near unbearable, yanking him closer and closer to Draco as the other boy seemed intent on ignoring it. Harry tightened his hold, scrunching up his face in an effort not to groan in annoyance.

“Dray… I will respect any decision you make, but holding this back is hurting the both of us. I hope you know that either way, I'll always be right there next to you.” 

And then everything snapped into place.

Harry wasn’t certain where he ended and Draco began, their bodies and souls pressed so close together that the wendigo could likely reach out and brush a bloodied claw across the veela’s beak. 

Harry breathed in, and Draco breathed out, and for a moment his heart thumped a steady rhythm in his chest. For a moment he felt that maybe he was human after all, no monster could possibly feel emotions in such a human way after all.

He heard a second snap, the profound clicking of something wedged in an unnatural position finally clicking back into place-like a dislocated bone popping back into the socket. The feeling came next, an incomprehensible feeling of relief that washed through him like a tidal wave, the deep seated ache that had sat uncomfortably but ignored behind his rib cage being washed away with a soothing, bubbly feeling. Draco practically collapsed into him, a soft, tired sigh escaping him as he did. For a moment Harry couldn’t remember who he was, where he was sitting or why. It was all blurry, his vision being overtaken by a pleasant glow.

It was then that he realized the glow was emanating from the two of them.

He realized what was happening a second after the explosion, the buildup of magic clutched in their bond exploding outward and encompassing the both of them in electrifying energy. He shuttered, taking the wave of energy as it rolled through the air. It subsided nearly instantly after, and they were left with a visible string of light connecting them together, colors of black and red and green and subtle, nearly invisible specks of gold flitting about, wisps of reddish-black light tangling cautiously through far more enthusiastic green. He reached out, entranced by the gorgeous shade of black-red, and felt heat radiating from it.

_ Draco’s magic.  _ He realized, leaning back on his haunches in an effort to see the whole of the bond. He hadn’t expected it to be… visible, and might prove to be an issue if he couldn't figure out how to make it fade away again.

“Merlin…” Draco’s eyes were  _ sparkling,  _ looking down at the bond with undisguised awe, Harry couldn’t help but smile as he watched Draco’s hands carefully touch the threads of magic, tangling through the green and gold as if it was strings of silk. He had always been curious what his soulmate’s magic looked like, as he had known what his own core appeared as since he first saw it so many years ago. He had always thought that perhaps Draco’s soul would be a ball of flames, churning and twisting in the boy’s chest like fiendfyre. It made sense that his soul was mostly black though, with only hints of red fire peaking through-his creature inheritance was just barely half a year old after all, and he was a dark wizard despite his age.

Harry reached forward, long fingers entwining with the magic and Draco’s own, the bond interlaced between their hands. He didn’t doubt that the visibility of the bond would diminish soon, as it was likely due to the buildup of magic in their cores created from the delayed completion of the bond, but he still enjoyed looking at it.

Harry glanced upwards, catching Draco’s gaze and grinning, finding his soulmate’s eyes shining like rays of sunshine peeking through storm clouds. Warm and cold encompassed him, and for once, Harry was quite certain that everything would be just fine.

* * *

It became very obvious very quickly that no one else could see the soul bond.

It was also quite obvious that it was not going to become less visible to them anytime soon.

After talking quietly for several hours about the past year and where it had taken them, Harry and Draco had eventually gone to bed, the faint glow of the bond reaching across the room to tie them together from their separate beds. Blaise had finally returned to the dorm early that morning, and Draco woke from his sleep to the door shutting, a familiar voice moodily grumbling about Crabb’s snoring and shaking him from a soothing rest. He had bolted up with panic, realizing that there was a faintly glowing and  _ very  _ obvious tangle of tangible magical energy tying Harry and him together, and Blaise would obviously see it and freak out. He had nearly shouted out at to poor boy, just about ready to lie his way through a no doubt agitated conversation, but the italian had merely looked at him with slight concern and confusion, asking warrily if he was going to light something on fire again, and (after getting an assured negative in response) meandered into bed, mumbling something about trying to get a few sparse hours of sleep before more drama wakes him up.

Draco had gone back to bed worriedly, thinking that Blaise had just been too tired to realize that there was a thick string of multi-colored light between him and Harry, and was expecting to be woken up to confused screaming. However, the morning was much the same as it always was, as he woke to find the bond going outwards towards the general vicinity of the showers, phasing through the walls and likely coming out the other side. 

After that, he and Harry had kept a cautious eye on everyone around them, noting that nobody seemed to notice anything amiss. After that revelation, the week began to pass with a delightful mix of mind-numbingly boring classes and Harry’s soothing presence at his side, the soulbond like a string of light between them. He had taken to calling it a rosary, finding that while he hadn’t a clue what the word meant, and Harry seemed incredibly amused whenever he used the term, he felt that it fit somehow, and the word stuck.

“Perhaps it's normal, and people just never speak about it? There are many things throughout history that have been lost and forgotten because people were too embarrassed to write it down.” Harry’s awkwardly long arms were bent at the elbow, resting on the table as he read from Draco’s christmas present. Neither of them had yet to figure out who had sent it or where Harry’s gift to him had gotten off to, but it was a great resource for researching their newest intrigue, so Draco had decided that it was hardly important.

“Does it even matter? No one else can see it anyhow.” Draco didn’t feel the same amount of urgency to figure out why the rosary was palpable or visible to them, as it didn’t hinder him at all and was really quite handy. He had found out one day that he could tug on his end when Harry was particularly far away, and the other boy would feel an insatiable urge to seek him out. Of course, he hadn’t told Harry about that particular property of the rosary, as he worried the mad scientist would become even more obsessed with figuring out the mystery than he already was.

“Of course it's important! The irregularity has got to mean  _ something.”  _ Really, he was quite certain that Harry was secretly happy about the ‘irregularity’, as while his soul mate was making a valiant effort to study and document every slight alteration in the bond (all the while vigorously explaining the interprocesses of it to a still not quite as knowledgeable or fascinated Draco) as well as trying to figure out why it was still visible to them even though every little scrap of information he could find said that a soul bond was most certainly  _ not _ a tangible thing that could be touched or even seen. From Draco’s perspective, it was quite clear that Harry wasn’t really all that keen on fixing the ‘problem’, but was simply confused as to why it was there in the first place, and no doubt frustrated that he couldn't figure it out.

“Sometimes things don't have to mean something Harry. Besides, it's not like it's hurting anyone, what's the issue?” Draco yawned, leaning back in his chair and throwing his feet up on the desk, looking around uninterestedly at the library as he did.  Jörmungandr was stretched out between two identical shelves, snoring softly from where he laid on the stone floor. Theo was curled under the snake's massive head, muttering in half hisses as he read through some sort of book.  _ He is spending far too much time with that basilisk.  _ Truthfully, the both of them had been a tad worried about Theo, as through the past week he had become increasingly tired and was very clearly on another one of his obsessive research sprees. However, Draco had been too focused on Harry and his delightful nonsense to deal with Theo’s much less adorable obsessions, and had shrugged it off as the same old Theo. On the desk several feet away from them was a cage holding two rats, who were both cowering pitifully in opposite corners. Harry’s familiar leather notebook sat there as well, having been set down till a time that he might take it back up again. 

He turned back to Harry, finding a flash of affectionate irritation sweeping quickly across the gangly teen’s face, the boy glaring half heartedly at him as it did. “The fact that you are not at all curious about it gives credence to the amount of pain you were in because of the unfinished bond-”

“The rosary you mean.”

“... yes, that.” Harry sighed, rubbing his face tiredly. “I'm just worried is all Dray, you seem unusually carefree and I… am concerned that your body has been under too much stress for too long.”

Draco made a face, scrunching up his nose as he leaned further back in his chair, carefully adjusting his wings to fit perfectly through the gaps in the seat’s back. He had been finding himself wanting to take off his shirt the second he was in the company of people who knew of his... particular physical irregularity, and was near constantly shirtless when in the dorm or secret library because of it.

“Harry I feel incredible, is it so bad that I'm enjoying it?” Harry busied his lip, peering down at the book with obvious worry. “Well… I-”

“I'VE GOT IT!”

Theo’s voice cut him off, and they both turned questioningly towards the boy as he shuffled through papers strewn about the stone floor,  Jörmungandr sleepily peering over his shoulder in confusion.

“What've you got mate?” Harry was half out of his seat, the topic at hand almost instantaneously forgotten as the manic brunette clambered to his feet with mountains of parchments held tightly in his arms.

“I've hunted down Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup!”

* * *

Theo threw over a months worth of hard work down on the table, grinning happily down at his handiwork. It had been something of a pet project of his to find the Founders’ artifacts ever since he had found the mysterious pedestals in the back of the library during their second year. He hadn’t told the others obviously, as he rarely did much with it besides look at old depictions of the objects and sigh tiredly over how hopeless the task was. Along with the nonsense that was his summer vacation and the various other things that had happened during his third year, Theo had had very little time to actually do anything besides just that.

However, something wonderful had happened over the yule break, as he had had very little to do and the sudden ability to do it, and he had started searching more vigorously for the missing treasures. Especially since Blaise had seemingly gotten rid of whatever the issue had been with him, and was now quite firmly ensconced in his budding romance with Daphne, he had had quite a bit of time to furiously study old texts and owl various dusty old people about the bloody things. Sadly, both Ravenclaw’s diadem and Gryffindor’s sword were quite firmly lost to time, the last known records of them being from the Founders’ time. However, both the cup and locket had been owned-for a very brief time-by a woman named Hepzibah Smith, who was tragically killed by her house elf a couple days after coming into possession of the locket.

Upon learning of that, Theo had thought that he had hit another dead end, and had spent several days in something of a funk, watching glumly as Harry went about torturing some rats with something that looked quite like liquid luck. The thing that snapped him out of it however, was Draco’s sudden and inexplicable outburst over the realization that he and Harry were soulmates, and-after letting Blaise sleep in his bed for the night as the two of them had a heart to heart-he took to the library to dive back in and retrace his steps. This, of course, led him to the place that Madam Smith had bought the locket, a small shop in Knockturn called Burgan and Burkes, and the teller that sold her the artifact.

Tom Marvolo Riddle was the name that he had found, and while that was alarming in itself (as his grandfather often spoke of what a good man his old classmate had been, and what a fine Dark Lord he had become) he had not been quite convinced of himself. However, the itch behind his skin that warned him of a great deal of lost sleep on the horizon if he didn't solve the mystery pushed him forward, and Theo had managed to find documentation of Mr. Riddle’s resignation from his post at the store the day after Madam Smith’s untimely death.

It became quite clear to him then, that the young, freshly graduated Lord Voldemort had stolen not only the locket but also the cup, as the Smith family had yet to either come clean about its missing status or flaunt the cup in the way that they had been so fond of doing prior to 1946.

“Of course, it is well known in my grandfather’s circles that you-know-who had attempted to become immortal, and that the founder’s artifacts had something to do with it, so it is clear that he must have been tracking them down in order to do some sort of ritual with them. Or perhaps he had also found the library and had realized that the pedestals were somehow a key to solving immortality.” Theo finished with a slightly manic flourish, holding up the document regarding Riddle’s resignation as well as the transaction receipt detailing the transaction between Madam Smith and Burgan and Burkes. Harry raised an eyebrow, appearing somewhat impressed but rather underwhelmed. Draco, however, was very clearly not paying attention, instead starting up at the ceiling and appearing bored.

Harry pursed his lips, his eyes darting across the page of parchment held in front of his face as he spoke. “Jörmungandr told me that Riddle was quite the bore though, and that he hadn’t been granted entrance to the library after requesting it.” Harry replied casually and with an uninterested shrug, leafing through the stacks of papers as if they hadn’t been Theo’s obsession for the past several months. “Besides, how does that mean you've found them? All this proves is that Voldemort squandered them away somewhere secret-no doubt to be lost once again to time after he croaked… which I suppose is technically my fault.”

Draco snorted, leaning a bit into Harry as he held up a drawing of gryffindor’s sword to the light. Theo let his arms fall, reaching instead for a separate sheet of paper from the stack, slapping Harry’s hand away as he reached for it as well.

“I’m getting to that, just listen-I had found myself at another dead end, and by that time it had been about two days after Draco’s second meltdown of the year and you two had quite clearly ‘tied the knot’ so to speak, acting awfully giggly and somehow more obnoxious than you had been prior-yes, I'm not blind, I have two eyes and I use them to roll at the two of you all the bloody time. Now, Luna had also said something about a string attaching you both, but Luna often say strange things so that was of no consequence-”

“What do you mean-so Luna can  _ actually see it?” _ Harry was staring intently at him as Draco groaned, leaning backwards on the back two legs of his seat. 

“Oh give it a  _ rest _ Potter-”

“Shush love, this is important. Now, Theo, what  _ exactly _ did Luna say?” Draco nearly fell back in his chair, only managing to stay firmly in place due to his wings flapping erratically and righting him. His face however, was cherry red and his eyes were blown wide, watching Harry with his mouth gaped open as the oblivious teen stared aggressively at Theo, who took a moment to tiredly blink, before shrugging.

“Luna is like that sometimes, she talks about me being made of rivers of honey-whatever that's supposed to mean. If you want to know what she’s on about with the random shite she says, you'll have to talk to her about it. But anyway-” Theo continued on with his rant, ignoring how Draco was very obviously paying even less attention to him and Harry was now flipping through his book, mumbling on about seers and stupid irregularities.

“So then, I had reached the last dead end of my long search, and was quite stumped with what to do. So, on Wednesday, in an act of desperation, I owled my grandfather and asked what he knew about you-know-who’s younger years-more specifically how he was in his twenties and thirties. What he told me was much the same, except for something interesting-Tom Riddle had tried to get the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor when he was thirty eight! This has been said to be because he wanted a reason to be at Hogwarts to recruit people for his Death Eaters, but grandfather seemed vague about the details. Anyhow! Grandfather mentioned in his letter that you-know-who had been wanting to hide something in the Nott estate prior to this, but grandfather had refused on the basis that he had no good places in which to hide things. So, it is quite likely that Tom Riddle had to have hidden either the locket or cup in Hogwarts-but I'm not done!” Whirling around, Theo scrambled for more parchments in his pile, noting through his exhausted daze that Harry seemed to have set the book down and was now addressing him strangely.

Turning back around, Theo saw white dots for a moment and felt himself fall backwards before a familiar large head steadied him. Righting himself, he pat Jörmungandr distractically before resuming his rant. “I thought that perhaps I could narrow it down some more, so I asked grandfather to write to others in his… groups of common company, asking about either a cup or necklace that might have come into their possession. This led me to Draco’s mum of all people!” The aforementioned boy was now also paying attention, cheeks still tainted with red and foot tapping against the cool stone floor. “Lady Malfoy seemed curious about my search, and had made it known to me that her sister-the one that hadn’t been disowned… the crazy one-had once flaunted about a cup made of gold, stating that the Dark Lord had gifted it to her to keep safe. Since Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband, and her step-brother are all locked up in azkaban, and their properties seized, it can be reasonably assumed that the locket is somewhere in Hogwarts or at least on the grounds, and the cup could quite possibly be in possession of the ministry or perhaps even in gringotts!”

He let out a breath of air, feeling another dizzy spell coming on and deciding rather quickly to sit down on the floor, crumpling the paper clutched in his hand as he did. Harry appeared incredibly impressed and a tad concerned, looking down at him with that same strange look he had on before.

“That is certainly an…  _ interesting _ theory-”

“It isn't just a theory! I've got concrete evidence in this right here-” Stumbling to his feet, Theo ruffled through the parchment again, ignoring as a cold hand rested on his shoulder.

“I think it's time to take a nap Theo, you've barely slept for the past week and it's obvious the sleep deprivation is making you go mad.” Something was muttered in parseltongue, and Theo was surprised that he could make out a few words from the usual nonsense. The surprise stopped his movements, and he didn’t even realize it as a cool, scaly tail wrapped around his midsection, and a muttered spell that sounded suspiciously like stupify was cast, his world falling into blissful darkness.

* * *

Harry hadn’t been quite sure what to make of Theo’s discovery, and was tempted to brush the entire thing under the rug if it were not for the stunning accuracy of his findings. The fact that Theo had only been searching for about two months, and that he had actually discovered the positions of two horcruxes (though he had been a tad off about the locket-and Harry couldn’t really fault him for it). That he had managed to find anything wsa not only incredibly impressive but a true testament to the genius of Theo’s unique mind. 

That being said, Harry was far more focused on what the boy had said about Luna than anything about the location of a few dusty artifacts that he didn’t really need yet.

“So, what, you can see souls? Are you mad, Lovegood, or just pulling my leg?” Draco seemed not only unimpressed by the girl but incredibly annoyed that they were even bothering in the first place. Truthfully, Harry was feeling that the entire thing was unnecessary as well, as the tangible ‘rosary’ was inherently superior to any other sort of soul bond from what he had read. However, Harry worried that the few flakes of gold that flitted through the air around the rosary gave credence to the idea that it was only tangible due to his tie with Death, and Harry wasn’t particularly inclined to see if there was any sort of unintended consequence of exposing Draco’s soul to death magic. The other teen already seemed off in a way that Harry couldn’t quite understand, acting relaxed and almost… bubbly after the bond was formed. Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, especially after he started to act similarly. 

“I see magic technically, but you’re very close.” Harry had dragged Draco off to find Luna after being assured by Jörmungandr that he would take good care of the overworked Theo. He felt quite bad about not even realizing that Theo’s exhaustion was to be credited to his strange need to research something till it just about killed him, but it certainly gave Harry something to think about on the way to the astronomy tower.

“Magic or souls, which is it?” Draco had leaned back against Harry’s right shoulder, a position that they often took when sitting on the floor or lounging around. To him, it was quite obvious that Theo’s strange bursts of aggressive researching that he had been experiencing over the past three years had to be due to his seer abilities, which by extension meant that they were all Fate’s fault. If Theo had really been thinking about the pedestals and just recently began to search for the artifacts, then it was clear to him that Fate was either extremely bored or trying to set him up for something-maybe it was an attempt to leave him a clue. Regardless, Theo seemed to have it handled, and would no doubt tunnel onto this one specific topic till he was positive of each of the artifacts locations.  _ I'll decide how to let him know about where they are as he goes. I still have no way to get to the cup or sword at the moment anyway, it would be good to see if he manages to figure something out. _

“Well, a soul is made of magic, so there really isn't a difference between them when talking about wix. Muggles on the other hand, are quite fascinating! At least, I think they might be... I’ve never actually met one you see.” Cluing back into the conversation, Harry watched as Draco narrowed his eyes in clear agitation. The two blondes tended to but heads rather often, though it was more akin to a raging bull slamming into a cloud of fog-that being completely ineffective and quite hilarious. The issue, of course, was that Luna was so unperturbed by all of Draco’s snark, and Draco was obviously annoyed by this revelation, and decided that the best way to go about fixing the problem was to get even more snarky and rude.

Again, bull meets fog.

“She's absolutely mad Harry, anything you ask goes in one ear, through the stomach of a flobberworm, and out the other end, her answers always end up an incomprehensible mess of flobberworm excrement.” Draco began to stand, but Harry lazily pulled him back down, throwing an arm over his shoulder and pinning the grumpy boy in place. Harry felt the beginnings of a smile tug at his cheeks, Draco’s sass had been something that he had long since grown to adore.

“Come on then Luna, let's hear about the flobberworm dung.”

The girl smiled serenely, peering at the start of his scar with great curiosity. “Well, Draco’s magic is very dark-almost black-and his core is the darkest part, with a very shocking sliver of red peaking through it. His body is one of the very few that I have trouble seeing, as his soul and magic are so strong and radiant that it expels outwards in a three foot radius in each direction. I can tell that I can't see him quite right, as while I believe he is about six feet tall, your movements like the one just now and Theo’s teasing makes me believe that is incorrect.”

Draco grumbled as an actual smile cracked through Harry’s cheeks, and he laughed lightly at the mental image of his soulmate’s magic. Really, he had always known that Draco was stunningly powerful, but to have magic that radiated out of him and into the surrounding area was nothing short of incredible.

Luna continued, smiling slightly as she began to speak about his own soul. “You however, have a very beautiful soul-one that seems very near collapsing in on itself, like a black hole. It appears very tiny, but the light that it gives off shows that it is actually just very dense, getting worryingly close to bursting outwards and completely recreating your soul and magic as it does. I'm quite excited to see what will happen once you do. Will the red bits of soul in your head go away then, I wonder?”

Harry felt his familiar ice turn to fire instantly. An unpleasant, worried fire that threatened to overtake his cool mind. She could see  _ Tom’s soul  _ in his head. Harry gaped like a fish for a moment as Draco vigorously questioned the girl, but she was becoming increasingly vague as he went on. Harry gathered himself, leaning forward as he pulled Draco back. “Luna, what does the red look like?”

Her gaze shifted from a place a little right of his heart, traveling up towards his hairline.

“Like a lightning bolt made of blood.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okaaaayyyy... I have a couple of questions for the peanut gallery. Tbh, I've been thinking about both of these things for quite a bit, but want all of you to give me your personal input on it so I can get an idea of what the readers want, as both things will affect all of you much more than they will affect me.
> 
> 1: How do you all feel about me taking a week long break after 3rd year (3 more chapters) so that I can both gather my thoughts and go back over the fic and fix all the subpar writing in the first 30-ish chapters that is really getting on my nerves. This editing will happen regardless of a week break, but will happen slowly and not as effectively for me and I just prefer having the week to do so, but it is totally doable to do without the week break.
> 
> 2: Splitting the story into two books. Listen to me on this, were going to wrap up 3rd year on chapter 72, and year 4 will easily take us into the hundreds. That's a lot of chapters and I want my story to be easily digestible. That isn't very easy to do if people come across it and its 300+ chapters, and will likely just make people overwhelmed. There is also the fact that I want to separate the story into 1-4th years and 5-7+epilogue, as years 5-7 are planed out to be VERY different than 1-4, and I feel like there should be a little separation between them.
> 
> Again, I want honest opinions on this, nothing sugarcoated like 'it's perfect just the way it is!!!' because honestly, that doesn't help me come to a decision all that much. If you don't like either ideas, please tell me why and what I might be able to do instead! Trust me, I can take the constructive criticisms.
> 
> Annnyway, now that the bond arc has reached its climax, perhaps we can get into some fun and well deserved murder? ;)


	70. Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's soul implodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the end of term and I have so much woorrrrkkkk *cries*
> 
> Anyway, I know I haven't updated in a week, and no that isn't because I was editing the older chapters, because I want to finish 3rd year before I do that. The reason is that I take three AP classes and it is the end of term, and I barely had enough time in my schedule to breath, much less write this chapter.
> 
> WARNING: This chapter has... INCREDIBLY disturbing imagery. If you are uncomfortable with: disembowelment, cannibalism, skin suits (kinda), body mutilation (with given consent), mind control, or torture, then you might want to skip over the latter half of the chapter. (starts with "The night was quiet, impossibly so." and ends with "from his mind-from his soul.").

“Did you know that Rosier is in the hospital wing for drinking an expired love potion?”

Daphne gave her boyfriend an unbelieving look from where she was draped across his lap, attempting to read a book while casually broadcasting her relationship status. Harry also looked up, gaze revealing nothing but casual interest in the new conversation. Daphne raised an eyebrow, disbelief apparent in her expression. “Really? Who would have done that? Rosier isn't particularly pleasant to speak with _or_ to look at.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at the pair, shutting his book with a quiet thump. He had given Rosier the love potion-infused fudge right after yule break, because the little shit had been bothering him for a rather extensive amount of time at that point, mostly with easily dodged hexes and rude words. It seemed, however, that the idiot had left the fudge to ferment for months, and was probably in a great deal of pain for it. He had had it coming, in Harry’s personal opinion, but the fact that Ginevra had gotten off scot free because of it was making the entire situation a tad less satisfactory.

Sure, he had hoped that Rosier would immediately fall to the girl’s feet and proclaim his love, and since Rosier always flaunted his families less than legal ties to the ministry, it could have been a rather sloppy attempt to get the girl expelled and her wand snapped. Of course, he never fully expected Rosier to be a good little victim and eat the damn fudge, so he had come up with other alternative ways to get the chit out of his hair. All various bloody, painful alternatives.

“Hell if I know, but apparently his parents are trying to hush it up. I think they’ve decided to save face since it's impossible to figure out who sent him the potion.”

May had creeped around the bend faster than Harry had expected, with him and Draco spending far too much time lazing about being generally unmotivated and far too little time on much else. Sure, there had been talk of breaking the news of their-admittedly, rather obvious-relationship to the few close friends that had still managed to not figure it out. It seemed, to him at least, that while Theo and Luna were obviously aware, and likely saw it coming from years away, and he was positive the various slytherins that had made his acquaintance could tell something was amiss, it was quite clear that Daphne and Blaise, as well as Tracey (wherever she kept sneaking off to, he still hadn’t a clue) had no idea about it, likely because they were either too focused on their own romantic exploits or physically distanced from the group.

“A love potion? What do you mean a love potion?” Speak of the devil and she shall appear, Tracey joined them on the couch, appearing suddenly out of nowhere with a concerned look on her face. Harry raised an eyebrow at the girl as Blaise launched into a no-doubt dramatic retelling of what he had heard, waving his hands obnoxiously through the air. He sighed in annoyance, sitting back further as Draco adjusted himself, stretching out further than he already was sprawled out across the loveseat, legs thrown over Harry’s thighs and head resting on the plush arm of the couch.

Truthfully, Harry had been rather surprised at first that rumors weren’t running rampant, as they had not only not bothered hiding their hand holding or casual closeness while walking in crowded halls and during classes. However, he had been realizing more and more as time passed, that not much had truly _changed_ between him and Draco besides more verbal affection and the physical bond. It was likely that anyone who wasn’t already obnoxiously perceptive or a bloody _seer_ couldn’t tell the difference between how they acted before and after the rosary had formed. This realization made him finally understand just how close they had been prior, and solidified for him that the bond was not so much to pull them together, but to add depth to an already inseparable pair.

“So, what, no one even knows how he was poisoned? It could have been anyone!” Tracey was writing furiously into a tiny little black book as she ranted on, seemingly covering her curiosity with indignation. Harry’s eyes narrowed further, he had seen a very similar book held in the hands of one Pansy Parkinson on very many occasions. Suspicious.

“Well yeah, that's why not as many people are talking about it. The rumor mill would be going full tilt if everyone knew who had actually done it.” Blaise seemed in his element, spinning half-truths like fine silk as he lamented over Rosier’s plight, Daphne watching on in fond exasperation. Harry didn’t doubt that the only reason the rumor mill wasn’t shaking the school’s foundations was because Professor Snape was keeping the entire thing under wraps. It wouldn’t do to have slytherin appear weak in front of the other houses after all, people might start to talk about things they shouldn’t.

Still though, all the talk of Ginevra’s love potion-infused fudge was making him antsy, the memories of that christmas morning bubbling to the surface like hot tar, forcibly reminding him of the mind numbing anger he had felt. His mind kept forcibly wandering back to the plan he had cooked up nearly six months prior, and he suddenly felt the need to take a very long, very quiet walk. Patting Draco’s calf, Harry maneuvered it off of his lap and stood, brushing invisible dust from his shirt as he did. 

“And where are you off to, eh Potter?” Draco clambered after him, tugging at his jacket like a moody little kid. Feeling a spark of warmth in his chest, Harry hooked an arm over the blond’s shoulder in response, pulling him towards the common room exit. He faltered for a moment, mind darting around for a suitable response, before he latched onto a recent memory and ran with it.

“You remember how Luna said my scar looked like a lightning bolt of blood?”

Draco snorted, reaching up to the arm slung over his shoulder and casually tangling their fingers together. “Yeah, and how she was full of shite?”

Harry winced, beginning to move a tad faster in his pursuit of the common room exit. He had gotten out of that particular situation purely due to Draco’s inability to believe a single word that Luna ever said, which was not only particularly lucky for him but also rather sad for Luna, as the girl very clearly admired his scar and enjoyed speaking about it. He had gone back and apologized to her for leaving so soon, as Draco had stormed out of the astronomy tower shouting various alternatives of ‘utter bullshite!”, and Harry had followed after him. After returning however, he had, rationally, asked her to describe the scar more, wondering the true extent of it. It seemed, from her perspective at least, that the actual soul shard was considerably larger than his actual scar, branching down to about the base of his neck and wrapping around to the back of his head in massive bolts of faintly glowing red. It made a certain amount of sense to him, as Tom had long since added quite a bit of his own soul to Harry’s body since he first began existing there, so it was perfectly logical for the actual soul to appear larger than his scar physically was.

However, it did make him worry that the scar would begin to grow-curse scars were strange like that, so it was perfectly plausible for it to attempt to grow to match the size of the soul, which would make his relatively major facial deformity about twelve times worse. Cluing back into the conversation with Draco, he shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.

“I was just thinking… Do you reckon it would be fun to tattoo the scar red? To match her description of it, that is. I think it might look quite interesting.” They exited the common room, heading upwards as Harry tugged his soulmate along.

Draco made a disgusted noise, kicking him mid-stride in response. “As if I would ever let you do something so foul-”

“But Dray, just think about it! You have to admit that ‘a lightning bolt of blood’ is one hell of a descriptor.”

“That doesn’t mean it's a good idea! Get a tattoo of something bloody normal, you madman.”

Harry laughed lightly, pulling them around a corner and towards the direction of the grand staircase. “Something normal and bloody? A lightning bolt is normal, relatively speaking-”

“That's not what I meant and you know it you fookin’ twat!”

Rounding another corner, Harry felt someone knock into him full force. Grunting, he merely stepped back to steady himself, wincing as the person fell backwards with a loud thump, groaning in pain. For a moment, he was about to apologize, before a familiar head of red hair finally registered to him, and a wave of anger crashed through his quickly dwindling politeness. Draco harumped at the girl, sticking his nose up in the air while looking down at her at the same time. 

“Well well, if it isn't the Weaslette. Running around with your head cut off I see? Finally joined the other chickens, I presume.” On a better day, when the thoughts of her betrayal weren’t already fresh and nagging at his mind, Harry would have rolled his eyes or maybe even laughed along, but instead he just glowered hatefully at her girl, who was looking at him with a pleading expression.

Realizing that Harry wasn’t going to help her, Ginevra stood, glairing hatefully at the blond. “Piss off Malfoy, everyone knows you're more chicken than anyone around, needing Potter to keep you safe from getting hexed to bits.” They stood eye to eye, glairing with as much hate as they could muster towards each other. For a moment, Harry considered telling Draco to roast her alive to prove her wrong, indignation at his soulmate being insulted adding fuel to an already raging fire. Instead, he took a slow breath before raising a tired eyebrow, observing how Draco tightened his grip on the back of Harry’s jacket in silent assurance. 

This entire situation felt so different from the norm, revealing a building deviation that he had barely noticed happening. Sure, he had noticed Draco’s shift in hostility from one Weasley to the other since christmas break, and how the blond seemed to have turned his sights from Ronald only-a-mild-annoyance Weasley to the girl in front of them. From his knowledge, Draco was rather antagonistic towards the girl in general, but never to such an extent that she would feel the need to threaten bodily harm onto his person. That kind of provoking had been historically reserved for Ronald, where Draco would happily hex the teen to near-oblivion if he had the chance. 

Something had clearly happened between the two to cause such anonymity, a something that Harry clearly didn’t know _anything_ about.

Glancing between them, Harry thought of the plan that he had been furiously preparing for for the past several months, contemplating what day it was and all the pros and cons. Sure, he had wanted to wait till the full moon in June, but really, did doing it exactly one month early make much of a difference? It was clear to him now, that the older they got the more of an issue Ginny Weasley would become, and ripping the issue out, roots and all, before it had the time to grow into something unkillable was imperative for not only the good of his relationship but his own thrice damned peace of mind.

“Oh _real_ mature Weasley. Tell me, how long did it take to come up with that one? Weeks? Months?” Sighing, Harry began pulling Draco along, his eyes flickering over and catching Weasley’s for a moment before turning forward again, the sounds of Draco’s self-righteous muttering doing nothing to drown out his own troubled thoughts.

It was a rather risky move to kill her a month away from the end of the year, as he had first wanted to do it the last day of school before they boarded the train, so everyone would be thrown out of sorts and any investigation that might be held would be rushed at best. However, with a combination of what Luna had said about his nearly collapsed soul, all the talk of Rosier, and now this particular confrontation… well, it all made him feel very much inclined towards an attempt at premeditated murder.

“She’s a nosey bint isn't she? I swear, that girl has been stalking me for months.”

“She has? Why on circe’s green earth would she do that?” Draco made another excellent point. The girl’s incredibly annoying habit of following him around was also giving him a great deal of stress, and on several occasions had he had to skip a meal or two because the food smelt far too much like peppermint and pine, the now quite obvious tell that she had been sneaking more amortentia into his meals. Far too many occasions had this happened, in his personal opinion, as she was clearly escalating her efforts and inadvertently forcing him to go hungry. How much amortentia the girl seemed to have at her beck and call was just a tad bit worrying, in fact, because surely she had to have been using a great deal of it up. Molly had to be supplying her with the potion in some manner, it was the only thing that made an even remote amount of sense.

Draco leaned into his side subconsciously, grumbling on about all manner of things. For a moment, heat fully enveloped his left flank, and Harry found himself wondering what life would have been like if Dumbledore never existed. If he had been allowed to just be a normal teenager. Would it have been better then? Would he have been allowed to re-enter the wizarding world just as any other boy? Would Voldemort have even existed either? Would Tom Riddle have turned into the monster he had if Dumbledore had not fueled the fire?

Of course, Grindelwald would have still been an issue if that was the case, but surely someone would have come along to kill the bastard.

 _You can already change the future Harry, don’t think too hard about the past._ Tom’s words filtered through his mind, wholly unhelpful in their assurity.

_You forget, Riddle, that this is already my past._

_Then stop worrying about what isn’t yours to claim. Dumbledore’s birth is of no consequence to your life as it is now._

* * *

The night was quiet, impossibly so. No crickets chirped, and the near constant hum of magic in the air had diminished to nothing but a meer brush of cautious energy against his skin. Harry sat in the middle of the great hall, situated comfortably on the cold stone floor. There was no telling if this would even work, as he had never dared to attempt it after the several near-misses he had had in the past year. Sure, the wendigo reared up whenever it felt that it’s presence was necessary in saving his or another’s life, but he had never even considered calling it up on his own, too worried that it would get cocky and try to keep control for longer than convenient. Sure, he had made good headway with a few of the spirit’s powers, among them being his rather good handle on ice magic, but this was hardly some measly icicles, this was willingly allowing one of the most dangerous hunters in the world to take over your body in order to viciously murder a twelve year old.

Suffice to say, this was a mildly more stressful situation with considerably higher stakes. 

He let out a breath, resting his hands onto his knees and flexing his long fingers, making a face as the air seemed to still to the point of nothingness. For a moment, he waited, not allowing himself more than a second to contemplate if this was a good idea, before diving into his mindscape.

When he opened his eyes, his mind was just as he had left it, with the night sky above identical to the real one his body sat under, the bewitched sky of the great hall cloudless and bright in the light of the full moon. Standing from where he sat, Harry waited a moment as the drums and tribal singing and excited screeching drew closer. The stone was cold under his feet, and seemed to almost be breathing _with_ him in trepidation for what was sure to follow. 

An ever-bloodied claw came into sight, grasping the door frame into the great hall cautiously, as if contemplating Harry’s odd behavior. Following quickly after it was a near-skeletal arm and then an impossibly thin, deer-like body. Harry let out a breath, subconsciously falling back to the floor as his wendigo crept ever closer into the great hall. He felt his heart beating, the uneven tempo synonymous with the tribal drums as they grew nearer. 

He wondered, in a moment of clarity, why he ever thought that the spirit would want to kill him. In all the time that it had tormented him, he had never felt pain from its mental attacks, only during the day after when he was recovering from the shift. He had been attacked by the spirit in his mindscape sure, but it had never shown itself to _not_ be on his side. Why did he think that it wanted him dead?

In another moment, perhaps one of foolishness, he looked up to the beast as it crept forward, catching it’s glowing eyes and blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “We’re one in the same, aren’t we.” It stopped, tilting its head in silent question. Harry wasn’t quite sure why he said that, wondering why he ever thought this was an even _remotely_ good idea. Instead of backtracking however, he tried again, moving forward in much the same way it was-crouched near to the floor and on two bent legs. “I’ve been running from you, and you’ve been running after me, and I think I’ve finally realized why that is. You see-when Luna told me that my soul was caving in, she seemed to think that it was going to implode and be remade soon. You know, that never really sat right with me till now-till I remembered that we are quite separate despite being the same person.” It peered down at him with something that he thought might be confusion, letting out a little ‘pppurrp?’ in response. He tried again, confidence growing as it continued to not attack him. “You are a part of me. You are a part of me that I never listen to-because you are complete chaos and utter instinct-and instincts got me into quite a lot of trouble in my last life. But that’s what you embody, the pure, angry, unstoppable chaos that I keep locked away. My soul is imploding because you are at the center of it-pulling all of me closer and closer until everything collapses. That's your ploy, isn't it? That's what you want? For me to be forced to confront you and destroy everything in the process?”

He stopped suddenly, staring eye to eye with the wendigo as it got closer and closer, taking in the unearthly glow of its eyes with gentle familiarity instead of fear. “I know Death had a reason for saddling me with you, and I think I finally understand now. It was because you would have always been there either way-helping or hindering me, and being right here allows you to do both at the same time.”

For a moment, everything was still, and he felt the rise of anxiety. Had he made a mistake? He hadn’t even planned to do this, who knew what would happen. However, instead of screaming or attacking, his demon reached out, a single clawed finger pressing gently into his jugular notch, testing the sensitive skin as it cooed softly. He took another nervous breath, continuing on with his attempts as the claw seemed tempted to dive deeper into his jugular. “We’re the same person, just two different pieces of a bigger whole. You’ve shown time and time again to have the same drive as me. You love Draco just as much as I do, you are afraid of Tom’s experimenting… just as I am. And just as much as everything else, you secretly want to be able to live a normal life, hidden away from prying eyes.” He reached forward, fingers grazing the matted and bloodied fur.

“We’re one in the same, you and I, and I’m not so privy to fight against myself if there are greater threats on the horizon.”

For a moment, all was still, before he leaned forward and let the claw puncture his flesh, sinking further into the most tender part of his neck. There was no pain, and his demon met him halfway, beginning to cut a slow line downwards, cracking through his ribcage on a slow descent towards his stomach. It reached forward, slowly… gently, and deepened the cut. Slowly and methodically gutting him. In parallel to his first murder, his wendigo reached both claws into his stomach and pulled apart the seemingly fragile skin that covered his chest and abdomen. Harry sighed lowly as his organs fell out of him and into a heap on the stone floor below, blood and meat staining his pants as it was all ripped out and thrown into a big messy heap in his lap. He was shocked as he felt no pain, marveling at how the spirit reached upwards into his already-damaged rib cage and ripped his lungs and heart from his chest, gently tearing his organs away from his body. It felt strangely freeing, his mind awash with blood and stained with red, unnecessary clumps of meat and organs falling to the floor as if nothing but dead weight.

The tattered remnants of his ribcage came next, torn from his body piece by bloody piece, snapping apart as they were ripped from him, each band being snapped off of his spine as if nothing more than sticks off a tree. Harry found himself fallen onto his back, staring up at the starry ceiling as the perfect recreation of the night sky glittering beautifully.

“No clouds…”

He felt strangely empty, the cavernous hole where his chest and stomach once were feeling like an empty void. All that had made him human, from the unnecessary breathing to the unsteady heart were all gone, and he was left feeling much the same but shockingly light, the weight of necessity and mortality leaving him as the final rib was was ripped away, and all that was left for structure was his spine, which felt unsteady and unsure now with the structural cage missing.

The stars glittered prettily in the fake sky, and he took a deep breath as his demon reached both hands into his chest once more. All feelings, thoughts, and emotions faded away as the creature’s body began to shift and compress, shortening and crumbling in on itself. Boney shoulders under matted fur snapped and displaced and curled up into itself. Into him. The once massive animal shrunk and compressed, the large antlers snapping off and falling into the cavern that he had become, twisting and shifting into the mockery of ribs. The wendigo’s head begame his lungs, splitting in two and fitting snugly between the ribe-like antlers. It’s eyes, glowing brightly-hotly-enlarged and thickened, twisting into one glowing circle of light. It sat snugly in his chest, the mockery of a heart.

He laid there, dazed, as the cavern was filled with fur and blood and sharp teeth, the wendigo becoming all that he was inside, emancipated muscles and long limbs curling and shrinking into monstrous organs, gray and ashy and strangely comforting as they settled into place. The wendigo’s stomach became his own, fitting into his abdomen snugly with the rest of it, churning and gathering as the creature began to shrink further and further. 

He took a deep breath, and then let out all of the air in his not-lungs, finding the movement cumbersome and unnecessary. Reaching up, he felt at his face, moving slowly downwards over his neck, finding the incision easily enough. He shifted, hands fluttering down the suture as it stitched itself shut, managing to feel the fur and bone and spindly muscle that now rested within him before it was hidden away. He reached his pelvis and stopped, before reversing, feeling back upwards for a moment and finding that the incision was gone. Moving his other arm so that it rested on the stone floor, Harry began to sit up, peering down at his chest and stomach, which now appeared completely unchanged, if bloody, not a single hint of the incision past the scattered organs around him.

He didn’t breathe, he didn’t even move for a very long time, feeling unsure and disjointed. It was then, after he had sat silently for many minutes, did the littered organs around him begin to wither and rot, decomposition descending onto the human meat like a swarm of locusts. He watched, unfeeling, as his humanity turned to dust around him, the life force that he had held onto for far too long taking meer moments to be wiped from his mind-from his soul.

The wendigo's eyes, which had always shone brightly in near darkness, were glowing hot in his chest, the light burning brightly through his skin. Reaching towards the light, Harry hummed curiously, feeling the heat steadily increase. In all the times he had felt his eyes burning, it had always been so painful and twisted, but now it only reminded him of freedom-it reminded him, inexplicitly-of Draco, and of love, and of everything that he had been fighting for.

His vision was filled with the glow-with the heat-and his mindscape imploded, following along with his soul as everything was overtaken by white.

* * *

He woke.

He was not certain of what precisely He was, and was, for a moment, quite confused on the matter. He was certain that He had been someone different before, but couldn’t seem to place who that someone-or _what_ that someone, had been. He decided that, instead of chasing the memories that eluded him, He would instead make an effort to get his bearings. Yes, that seemed like something that He would do. Or maybe it was something that the other He would have done?

He was confused.

Staring upwards, He took in the sky above him, it was cloudless, and clear. He thought for a moment that He recognized it, but quickly brushed the thought aside, searching instead for his surroundings. Part of him wanted to stay and look at the sky, the other wished to move through the forest that He inhabited.

He looked around, and found not a forest, but a large space made of stone.

_The great hall._

He blinked, considering the words as they suddenly came to him. It was odd, thinking. He wasn’t used to it. Or was He?

_Are you daft?_

His eyes darted around, narrowed with practiced alertness. This had been a different voice, one filled with agitation and annoyance. Part of him knew the voice, part of him was warry-angry at its existence. He wasn’t quite sure which side to believe, both seemed to be quite sure about their thoughts on the voice, neither could agree one way or another.

_Harry, get a bloody grip. I understand that you have had a rather soul-melting experience, but this is no time to forget yourself._

Harry. That name was familiar to all sides in question. Good. He relaxed marginally, happy to have found common ground between the opposing feelings and memories. He wasn’t quite sure who Harry was yet, but He knew that they were important in some manner. He looked around at the great hall, taking in stones and… _and tables, those are banners up there-for the houses. Yes, that's right. Hogwarts. I'm at Hogwarts._ Both consciousnesses knew of Hogwarts, knew of the school’s long twisting halls and seemingly infinite secrets. He knew of the Forbidden Forest, and how it was both a danger and a comfort. Parts of Hogwarts seemed unfamiliar to one side of him, things like Slytherin and Gryffindor and… He blinked, looking back up to the banners. There was Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and all the colors they related to. Part of him was happy for this little remembrance, but the other side was firmly uninterested. 

He tried again, knowing now that Hogwarts was clearly a very important place to Him. There was Slytherin, which was an important thing because it was his house. Yes, that sounded quite right.

_Oh bravo Harry, you remembered your bloody Hogwarts house! Oh yes, very well done._

His eyes narrowed, not liking the voice’s tone. Ignoring it for a moment however, He started tunneling onto slytherin, thinking of all he knew of it. The house was situated in the dungeons and under the lake-under the Black Lake… he stopped for a moment, feeling a sudden rush of warmth when remembering the lake. It was important, what about it was important? He thought for a moment, trying to remember the lake and instead getting the inexplicable memory of gray eyes, of wet hair and pink cheeks and-

“Draco.”

Like a tidal wave, it all came crashing back down onto him, the animalistic thoughts and memories of the wendigo becoming less defined as years of thoughts, feelings, and knowledge came tumbling back into his head from where they had been floating out in the aether, lost for a moment as he became unmade and remade instantaneously. Harry pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes and watched lights filter through the darkness, groaning in pain. He took a breath habitually, choking on the gas as his body refused to cooperate, as if he had no lungs in which to take in air. He coughed for a moment, before settling, thinking about the lack of oxygen for a moment and finding that he felt no different. Setting the development aside, he reached down and felt for the sutured gash that the wendigo-that he? Merlin this was confusing-the gash that _he_ had crawled into, finding that there wasn’t a single blemish across his front barring the burn scar across his shoulder. He remembered then, that he was very clearly an idiot, as Tom was speaking in his mind instead of right in front of him, so he had very clearly vacated his mindscape, likely as it was getting rearranged to suit his new mentality.

Harry sat back for a moment, trying to sort the wendigo’s-his, _his_ memories. _Merlin,_ this was difficult-into some semblance of order. He knew now-or he had always known-how to take control of his body and how to shift, though Harry’s normal mind still felt that the knowledge was unfamiliar, though he was becoming acclimated to it as the seconds passed. Harry craned his neck upwards, taking in the stars above his head, watching as a cloud began to slowly drift past canis major. His memories were concrete, though they differed and argued when both sides of his slowly converging mind had been existing in two separate places, mostly times through the past year.

He sat there for quite some time, staring up at the sky as he sorted through the most pressing of memories and thoughts. It wouldn't do to waste his time doing all of that right now, he had something to get done. He thought for a moment, trying to figure out what it had been.

_Bloody hell-Ginny Weasley Harry, you were going to kill Ginny Weasley. Honestly, how did you survive without me?_

_Funny that, I don't recall needing to reboot myself over those months, perhaps you could remind me of a time in which my entire life needed to be recollected while you were off being an idiot messing with your dangerous soul pieces?_

_Oh so what, have you sided with the beast within? Suddenly think that my seclusion was the best method of madness to keep me contained?_

_I am the beast within, and I say you were an idiot and a prat._

Harry stood, stretching his familiar yet unfamiliar muscles. He knew what his human body felt like, but also felt that he had never experienced it before. He flexed his toes and fingers, feeling somewhat strange without the claws that he was used to-not used to having? He grimaced, this was going to take far longer to figure out than he had hoped.

 _Oh well. I can worry about that after the deed is done._ Shifting into his normal form-no, it was the wendigo's form, which was his normal form as well now, he supposed? He would consider that thought later. Shifting into his other form was as easy as it had-apparently-always been, and the cracking of bones and lengthening of his spine all felt well practiced-for both sides of his mind. Settling onto his haunches, now having completed the shift, Harry looked around with a combination of scientific curiosity and mechanical habit, simultaneously getting used to the height while looking for potential prey. He battled with himself for a moment, trying to convince one side that a specific kind of prey had to be found, and the other side arguing that all prey was good prey. The later argument was beat down, however, and he let out a throaty growl, twisting it into a tantalizing melody as he crept into the shadows.

It was time to hunt.

* * *

Ginny Weasley was a particularly light sleeper, so when the soothing noise brushed against her ears, it easily shook her from slumber. Rising cautiously from the warmth of her pillow, the girl took a moment to listen to the soothing song, wondering just what about it was so peculiar. For a moment, she felt a deep seated unease, but as the song rose in volume and beauty, the feeling melted away, and she pushed the covers to the side. Standing from her bed, Ginny swayed for a moment, before disregarding slippers and padding softly to the door, silently pushing it open and slipping out into the hall. Her consciousness left her for a moment, and when she gained awareness again she was walking through the halls of Hogwarts, her path cutting her towards the great hall. Closing her eyes, Ginny allowed the sweet melody to pull her further towards her destination, passing by sleeping portraits and slumped over suits of armor. Her vision faded away again, and when it came back she was in front of the great hall, slowly walking towards the entrance. She couldn’t quite consider what was going on as she walked, her mind half asleep and fuzzy and not for a moment taking in anything that was going on around her. It was dark, she could tell that much, but for the life of her she could not figure out a single other thing around her. 

She felt her legs moving, felt her arms swaying with the movement, but could see nothing but the foggy feeling around her and the cotton in her ears and head, blocking out all noise as if in a dream. Quite suddenly, her vision cleared, revealing the great hall lit by nothing but the full moon outside and faintly glowing stars. Blinking the fog from her mind, Ginny felt the beginning of panic bubble up from deep in her chest, the feeling that something was very, _very_ wrong itching under her skin. Noises continued to filter through the air, sometimes just wind but oftentimes not. She shivered, whipping around as a whisper sounded from behind her. She could see nothing but darkness in front of her, though the whispers continued to persist, beckoning her back the way she had come.

Cautiously, and with a much clearer head, Ginny crept forward, listening as the whispers seemed to move to her right, and then her left, and then all around her, overwhelming in that they seemingly existed everywhere and nowhere. She stopped, heart beginning to beat erratically in her panic as the whispers rose in volume, surrounding her from every angle. Throwing her hands over her ears, Ginny felt her panic reach a breaking point, and she screamed as loudly as she could, hoping that someone would hear her and help. Near-instantaneously there was an incredible pain in her side, one akin to being ripped to pieces, and her scream tapered off into a pathetic whimper as she collapsed to the floor, the pain and heat centralized into her stomach. There was a wretched, sinful tearing sound, and for a moment her mind cleared enough for her to realize that it was _her_ skin. That she was being torn apart as something bit into her and ripped skin from flesh. The pain was agonizing, blood seeping into her nightgown as warm liquid rose up her throat and into her mouth, tasting like iron and salty gore in the face of indescribable agony. Her mind grew fuzzy, the shock and fear and agony forcing the pain to recede. For a moment, all she did was lie there as agony tore her limb from limb, until all the panic and fear began to fall away, followed by Ginny herself as her consciousness began to slip like grains of sand through her fingertip. She tried, desperately, to scream out one final time, realizing very quickly that she very well might not wake up again, but only managed a quiet, pleading gurgle before her world fell into darkness.

_“...”_

_“Well, I certainly can't fault him for it.”_

_“You tend not to fault him for anything, sugar.”_

_“Oh like you’re one to talk.”_

Ginny felt nothing, she could not feel her arms, or her legs, or the pain from where she had been torn asunder by whatever had stalked her in the great hall. She heard voices though, one distinctly feminine, and the other clearly masculine. For a moment, she thought that perhaps she was in the medical wing, surrounded by friends and family, but when she tried to open her eyes, all she saw was neverending white.

_“Well, the soul is here now, so you can go collect it. Are you satisfied?”_

_“You say that as if you didn’t purposefully stick her in the line of fire.”_

_“I can hardly be held accountable for my actions!”_

Ginny tried blinking, tried moving her arms around or _anything,_ exerting an incredible amount of force with the desperate hope that she might manage to move even an inch. There was a noise of discontent, and she suddenly saw vague colors-peach and perhaps black-but then… no, there was green, there was gold too. Nothing was concrete or defined, swimming across her vision as if she was looking out through foggy glass. Where was she? What was happening?

_“Strange… it seems to be aware.”_

_“Really? Let me see!”_

More colors flit past her vision, mostly red and warm browns, the vague colors of fire and earth moving around in bubbly joy. She tried to reach towards the happy colors, finding that she was still unable to move.

_“Oh what fun! Do you think it remembers who it was?”_

_“Say the girl’s name and see.”_

_“Hmmm… Hello there, Ginevra Weasley! Did you know that you are very, very dead? Such a pity, truly, I almost feel bad for making it happen!”_

The panic returned like a wave of icy water crashing into her back, and Ginny fought harder to move, still finding that she could do nothing but stay exactly in place. She tried screaming out, tried flailing her arms and fighting against whatever it was that was keeping her in place, but with little avail. _I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not DEAD!_ Like a mantra she repeated it in her mind, hoping-wishing, pleading and _begging_ that it would come true. The woman laughed, loud and monstrous and horrible. The sound made Ginny stop thinking and simply sit, rooted in place with silent horror. It was a truly wretched laugh, full of malice and hate and cruelness. Ginny had never heard anything like it and never, _never_ wanted to hear anything remotely similar ever again.

“What do you think dear, can I keep it? I never knew a soul could be such fun.” Death observed the goddess of fate with a detached expression, observing how his chosen partner turned the pawn around in her hand. Watching the chess piece she held in her fingers, he grimaced with slight embarrassment. It was strange really, how souls reacted to dying, he had never figured out how to make them stop being so aggressively clingy to their past life. They could behave perfectly well in life, being shaped into any form he wished, but tended to stay stuck that way for eons after their death. He had been cautious about molding all of the important souls into chess pieces because of that, but had been eventually convinced by Fate herself.

Sighing slightly, he looked down at the chess board, eyes raking over the souls of each player on the board, over the honey-colored bishop and the reddish-black queen. Eyes taking in the different colors that were all inexplicitly tied to a member of Harry’s growing armada. The black king was missing from the board-he had no control over it any longer, and it had cracked and splintered before exploding into formless light. Harry’s soul was not his to barter with now that it had remade itself, and its green-gold light was now sitting safely inside his eyes, cradled in the irises of his own, immortal form.

He sighed, sitting back in his chair. Ginevra Weasley’s soul was of no consequence to him. It hardly mattered one way or another if it existed in his afterlife or by Fate’s side. 

“Do whatever you want with it. I wasn’t planning on recycling it anyhow.”

Fate clapped with glee, peering down at the little white pawn with a demented gaze. The girl’s soul was rather plain really, as all the most interesting souls were made up of some sort of texture or color, but hers was a plain, smooth off-white, revealing nothing but a flat personality with flat emotions and baseless actions. 

It was dull, and inconsequential. No god or goddess would have any use for such a soul besides as a plaything.

“Do you think I could make it scream? I know it would take a lot of pain but… has a soul ever made a noise before?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

She hummed, turning the cracked pawn over in her hands contemplatively. “Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?”

* * *

Harry sat hunched over, his ferocious chewing slowing to a meer nibble, before he lifted his head, looking down at his long claws, which were coated in blood and guts. His black tongue lolled languishly, running over his teeth to clean them as he contemplated the sight before him. It was difficult to tell what the pile of blood and incremental matter used to have been, and if he hadn’t been the one to kill her, he wouldn’t have a clue as to who she was. Considering however, that he was in a school with a set population, it would be easy enough for the teachers to take stock of the children and figure out who was missing. 

He pulled a long strand of hair out of his teeth, flicking it onto the corpse. Or perhaps they would manage to figure out which little red-haired witch was missing from the small population of them that inhibited Hogwarts. Either way, he would be blameless, there was already a scapegoat prepared and ready for him after all, he didn’t do this on the full moon for nothing.

Rising to his hoofed feet, Harry popped his shoulders, feeling his joints all begin to snap out of their sockets and rearrange themselves. The fur receded, the bloodied antlers dropping to the earth as well, long claws snapping off with them. For a moment, Harry stood bare to the warm spring air, before he flexed his fingers and felt his wand fly to his hand, listening dutifully to his master. Waving it, the tattered remains of his clothing that sat a few feet away corrected themselves, knitting back together as they soared through the air towards him. Snatching the thin fabric out of the air, Harry quickly dressed, picking the remnants of his antlers and claws off of the floor below and vanishing them away, removing all signs of his activities that night except for the mangled corpse.

He felt uncomfortably cold walking back to the dorms, unthinking as he mindlessly followed the rosary down the halls, traversing through empty corridors as the faintly glowing bond lit the way back home. Harry was used to feeling cold, but the discomfort was new, and he felt for a moment that perhaps he had gotten too cold for even himself to bear. 

Stopping in the middle of the hall, he realized that he was still covered in blood, and began to pick up the pace, coming up onto the common room entrance soon enough and moving silently inside. It was only a short detour to collect new sleepwear, and he quickly found himself standing under a steaming shower, rubbing tiredly at blood as chills threatened to overtake him. It was strange, eating human meat for the first time in so long, the first and last instance being in his first year, and he was sure in the morning he would be feeling much better than he did now.

Stepping out of the shower, having given up on getting warm in any real capacity, he dressed quickly and dried his hair with a flick of his wand, stepping silently out into the hall and peering around in the darkness. Opening the laundry chute next to the loo’s door, he contemplated sending the clothes down, wondering if he could be made into a suspect for being awake so early. Shrugging to himself, he sent them down anyway, assured that everyone would believe that the corpse in the great hall could not have been made by a human being.

His dorm was a tad bit warmer than the hallway, likely due Draco’s elevated body temperature, as as he quietly shut the door, Harry felt the warmth slowly seep into his skin. Stopping at the foot of his soulmate’s bed, he contemplated if waking the boy and requesting physical closeness could be considered unchivalrous. 

Deciding that he didn’t particularly care, Harry leaned down and shook the teen, blinking in surprise as Draco jolted awake. “Bloody-”

 _“Shhh… sorry for waking you.”_ He spoke in a whisper, waiting for Draco to get his bearings as he stood quietly over him. 

Draco reached out without a word, grabbing hold of his hand and wincing, yanking it back as if burned, before reaching forward again and rubbing the hand between two palms. _“Harry, you’re bloody freezing! Way more than usual.”_

_“Yeah I know, mind if I slither in?”_

There was a moment of silence before Draco answered, annoyance evident in his tone. _“... only if you promise never to say that ever again.”_

Harry smiled softly, climbing into the furnace of a bed as Draco scooted over to make room. Reaching out, Harry pulled his soulmate towards him and settled the shorter boy under his chin, stroking the alula of his left wing gently. Draco sighed, moving closer and relaxing against his soulmate, curling his wings around the taller boy. Closing his eyes, Harry pulled the blond closer, burying his face in Draco’s hair as the teen’s ambient heat began to warm him to a comfortable temperature. In only a moment, he had fallen into a very deep sleep, thoughts of blood and bone and matted fur disappearing instantly as warmth surrounded him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters left! I might end up combining them into one big chapter too, but that really just depends on how I decide to go about writing them, so we'll see ;)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Suicide By Pilot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29020944) by [Dr_Z](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Z/pseuds/Dr_Z)




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